Multiple Large-Scale "Carbon Capture" Projects Slated For Illinois; Increasingly, Residents Aren't Buying The Story

[hatrack]

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The Heartland Greenway Vervain Project that sought to stash CO2 in the porous rock thousands of feet beneath Fosdick’s land was named for a prairie wildflower. It’s one of nine distinct proposals in Illinois awaiting the EPA’s green light, most of which would feature multiple wells. (Navigator CO2, the company behind the project, canceled it in 2023, citing an “unpredictable” regulatory process, but the EPA indicates its permit is still under technical review.)

Opponents of the growing industry say the threats to public health and safety without sufficient evidence of success do not justify expansion. The country’s first permitted Class VI well — at food processing powerhouse Archer Daniels Midland’s corn-processing plant in nearby Decatur — experienced multiple leaks in 2024 that the EPA said violated the Safe Drinking Water Act. ADM failed to alert the public or state and local officials to the 2024 leaks at its Decatur facility, even as it petitioned the city for an easement to expand its operations and as the state negotiated its first carbon capture regulations, the Safe CCS Act.

Those leaks stoked concern among residents and environmentalists that was already heightened by a 2020 pipeline rupture in Sitartia, Mississippi, that hospitalized at least 45 people and forced the evacuation of more than 200. ADM is now seeking to add additional wells and sequester up to 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year beneath Lake Decatur. That CO2 would come from a Broadwing Energy natural gas plant as part of a deal with Google to secure a “clean energy future” for the tech giant’s data centers.

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Meanwhile, the porous rock that makes Illinois an attractive site for storage is filled not with open air pockets but with briny, saline water that forms carbonic acid when it interacts with CO2. This acidified environment can cause heavy metals to leach out of the rock, according to Ted Schettler, the science director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, who has provided testimony about carbon capture pipelines proposed in North Dakota and Iowa. Any crack in the geologic formation could allow both heavy metals and carbonic acid to escape — a particular concern for wells placed near aquifers that provide drinking water to Illinois residents, he said. “They claim our rock formations are just perfect for sequestering CO2 because there is no way there can be a problem,” said Verlyn Rosenberger, a retired teacher in Decatur who has organized with Illinois People’s Action. “Well, there’s already been a problem.”

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https://www.thenewlede.org/2026/05/farm-country-critics-balk-at-carbon-capture-projects-citing-health-risks-of-grand-experiment/

[Midnight Writer]

1. Carbon capture is a hoax that has been going on for decades.

The fossil fuel industry will destroy our aquifer, which is what allows the Midwest to have fertile soil and bountiful crops.

Do we want our farmers to be able to produce food, or do we want our fat cat fossil fuel barons to make even more profit for destroying the world we live in?

[GiqueCee]

2. The corporatists...

... orchestrating this abomination would roast their own children on a spit for even a modest increase in their bottom line. They are soulless sociopaths utterly devoid of conscience or any discernible trace of common human decency. And these monsters are revered in a sick society that openly places profits over people. Fuck 'em all sideways.

[Midnight Writer]

3. We give people enormous financial incentives to act in a way that damages our people and our society

and even the planet we live on.

There is no financial incentive to be a good person, to be responsible for your actions, to make sacrifices to help others.

In fact, standing up to power will likely get you smashed.

With such a perverse incentive system, we will go nowhere but down.