THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2024
Multiple Safe Drinking Water Act violations were reportedly found by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during inspections at the country’s first carbon capture and sequestration storage project in Decatur, Illinois.
Owned by Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, the facility violations are related to corrosion detected in one of the two monitoring wells at approximately 5,000 feet and below, a spokesperson told Politico’s E&E News in a statement.
About the Violations
According to ADM, the Decatur project was “the world’s first successful completion of a pure storage CCS project. The project captures carbon created as ADM turns corn into ethanol to be blended into gasoline.
Additionally, ADM was reportedly the first company to get a Class VI injection well permit from the EPA. The company began injecting carbon at the end of April 2017.
The agency inspected the wells in June, looking into one used for storing captured carbon dioxide and two used to monitor leaks and other issues. ADM had reportedly discovered the problem back in March.
“We detected some corrosion in a section of one of two deep monitoring wells at approximately 5,000 feet and below,” ADM spokesperson Jackie Anderson said in a statement provided to DeSmog. Anderson said the amount of “cumulative fluid” that migrated is 8,000 metric tons, or “the equivalent of three days worth of injection.”
Corrosion is considered one of the major concerns of CCS, especially because carbon dioxide can become acidic when mixed with water. That leads to ocean acidification and also makes handling captured carbon potentially risky.
Then, in August, the EPA gave ADM less than a week to start working with regulators to get the project back into compliance with federal law.
“Given the public health importance of this matter, please plan to promptly request and thoroughly explain any request for extensions to the timeframes above,” the EPA wrote.
According to the notice of violation, ADM failed to meet the requirements of the underground injection permit and the Underground Injection Control regulations in the following ways:
An ADM spokesperson said drinking water supplies in the Decatur area were not impacted and the monitoring well in question was plugged.
“At present, EPA doesn’t have any information to suggest there is a threat to drinking water in nearby communities,” Macy Pressley, a press officer for EPA Region 5, wrote in an email.
“It isn’t the Region’s usual practice to publicize notices of alleged violations. `In this instance, the Region notified federal elected officials and state and local agencies.”
The EPA reportedly declined to go into detail about the notice, citing it as an “active enforcement matter.”
“EPA is working with ADM to gather more information and to ensure that issues identified in the notice are addressed as quickly as possible,” said Pressley.
Tagged categories: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS); Corrosion; Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); EPA; Government; Health and safety; potable water; Regulations; Safety; Violations; Water/Wastewater
