Public wary of Heartland Greenway CO2 pipeline project
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Elyse Clayton
Breeze Courier
CHRISTIAN COUNTY — US agriculture emitted an estimated 698 million metric tons of carbon-dioxide or carbon-dioxide equivalent in 2018, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) economic research service. This contributes to climate change, which “has the potential to adversely impact agricultural productivity at local and regional scales,” as the USDA explains.
As concern over climate change grows, as do projects to aid in climate change mitigation, which describes actions to help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Navigator CO2 Ventures has proposed one such project, called Heartland Greenway, to build a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) system throughout five states in the midwest.
“As we continue to discover innovative ways to support our agricultural community and families across the midwest, we can see carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is a clear path to the future,” Heartland explains on the main page of their website, heartlandgreenway.com. “CCS will help support our biofuels industries by allowing them to reduce their negative environmental effects which will open more markets for their product both here in the United States and overseas.”
The project would build a liquid carbon dioxide (CO2) pipeline through South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois, with about 240 miles of the pipeline as well as the permanent storage of the CO2 falling in Illinois. Christian County would house about 11.65 miles of pipeline and the final injection site for permanent storage.
Christian County Citizens to Protect the Aquifer and Eco-Justice Collaborative have opposed the project, speaking at board meetings and otherwise sharing information with the public about safety concerns.
“This technology’s ability to reduce harmful emissions is not yet proven, and the construction and use of these pipelines raises serious safety and property value concerns for landowners and farmers that reside along the pipeline’s path,” Eco-Justice Collaborative writes in a press release dated Mar. 8, 2022 and found on their website, ecocollaborativejustice.org. The group has organized a coalition to stop CO2 pipelines.
CCS begins at agricultural sites like ethanol plants and fertilizer manufacturing facilities, where companies like Navigator install equipment to capture carbon emissions before they reach the atmosphere. They treat the emissions so it is greater than 98 percent pure CO2 (other components would be air elements like oxygen and nitrogen) and compress it into a liquid state.
“The easiest analogy is propane in a tank at your barbecue,” explained David Giles, Chief Operating Officer for Navigator. “In its natural state, it’s a gas, but under pressure it’s a liquid.”
The now-liquid carbon dioxide is then transported by a steel pipeline system to a sequestration site. At the sequestration site, CO2 is injected over a mile underground via a well, similar to a water well or a disposal well. The liquid is permanently stored below impermeable cap rock into sandstone that currently contains undrinkable saline (salt) water.
“Really what this is is existing technology that is being used in a new way to help industrial facilities minimize their CO2 emissions into the atmosphere,” Giles said.
A part of that existing technology, Giles explained, is an operating CCS project in Decatur with two sequestration wells that have been operating without issue for about 10 years. Richland Community College in Decatur also has the National Sequestration Education Center
With the Heartland Greenway project, Navigator seeks to support the agricultural economy. Their customers are mainly ethanol plants and fertilizer facilities, who face “tougher and tougher regulations,” as Giles said, at the federal and state levels regarding carbon dioxide emissions. By lowering their carbon footprint, agriculture and biofuel companies gain access to federal tax cuts and fuel premiums, as well as a stronger competitive advantage against carbon alternatives in the future.
“Forty to 50 percent of corn in the United States goes into ethanol,” Giles said, “so it [CCS] supports the agriculture community by making one of their biggest markets strong for the long term.”
CCS also removes a lot of GHG emissions from the air, contributing to the battle against climate change.
“A lot of people are concerned about that [GHG emissions], and I recognize that there’s a lot of different feelings about climate change and what should be done about it,” Giles said. “We aren’t here to be ‘climate warriors’ about it; we’re here to help industries adapt to what we think and they think the future looks like for providing consumers lower carbon alternatives.”
Navigator, a for-profit infrastructure service provider, charges a fee to different agriculture and biofuel companies to capture, transport and sequester (store) their CO2 emissions. They also provide assistance if necessary for their customers to capture tax credits and access long-term carbon markets.
With the fees, Navigator can build and operate the project, as well as lease pore space under the ground from land owners in order to build the pipes.
Navigator has been making financial offers to land owners in the county and surrounding areas and are in direct negotiations with each farmer.
Navigator is also in early discussions with various county officials about entering into an agreement to pay in different ways into Christian County around $1.25 million dollars per year for the duration of the project.
“We think that it’s important that the citizens of Christian County understand that we’re here to be a good neighbor,” Giles said, “and we want to have a positive economic impact on the county.”
By limiting their carbon footprint with CCS, Navigator’s customers can access a tax credit for utilizing carbon oxide sequestration, found in Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 45Q, which is determined based on metric ton of carbon oxide captured and sequestered and can be up to $50 per metric ton, though proposals in Congress could boost that amount. This, along with income from higher fuel premiums and the voluntary carbon market, creates a revenue for each business.
Navigator expects Heartland Greenway to run for 30 years before reaching the limit of CO2 they can inject into the wells as outlined in their Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) permits. At that point, they will close down the wells and plug them with concrete as one would for an oil or gas well. They will continue to monitor the injection site for a period of time afterward, in accordance with their permits.
Eco-Justice Collaborative started the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines, a growing movement made up of Illinois environmental groups, landowners and residents, to help “stop the rush on risky CO2 pipelines,” as explained on their website, noillinoisco2pipelines.org. They have actively fought against Navigator’s project.
Online, they list their eight reasons to oppose CO2 pipelines: (1) “CO2 pipelines aren’t safe,” (2) “eminent domain supersedes landowner rights,” (3) “pipeline construction damages topsoil and reduces crop yield,” (4) “few regulations exist for CO2 pipelines,” (5) “pipelines extend the life of fossil fuel use,” (6) “CO2 pipelines are funded by the taxpayer,” (7) “for landowners, it’s all risk and no reward,” and (8) “CCS hasn’t worked.”
Two examples have been continuously brought up in regards of the safety of CO2 pipelines: a pipeline leak in Mississippi from 2020 and a video from DNV showing a dense phase CO2 eight-inch NB pipe rupture in 2013.
According to the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines and various news articles, in February of 2020, a CO2 pipeline rupture in Mississippi landed over 40 people in the hospital and required the evacuation of over 200 others.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services at dos.wisconsin.gov, exposure to CO2 can cause health effects, including headaches, dizziness, restlessness, a tingling feeling, difficulty breathing, sweating, tiredness, increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, coma, asphyxia and convulsions.
However, according to Giles, a leak would be unlikely and far less catastrophic than described.
“The likelihood of a slow-moving leak where you have gas in your basement or destroying crops is, like I said, very, very low,” Giles said. “If there were to be a leak, and this is also unlikely, it is most likely to happen at the well itself.”
He went on to explain the procedure for if there were a leak at the injection site, which would include a set of valves on top of the well installed for that very scenario.
Three Scottish researchers analyzed the dangers of CCS by looking at natural CO2 seeps in Italy, as found in a 2011 research article titled “Assessing the health risks of natural CO2 seeps in Italy” for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) at pnas.org. They concluded that “without decarbonization by CCS and other methods, risk of death from climate change will be much greater than that from breached engineered CO2 stores.”
“CCS cannot operate with zero risk,” they write in the article’s conclusion. “We have shown here that even if all containment fails and stored CO2 leaks to the surface, the risk of death is extremely low. Hence the current public concern regarding death by CO2 leakage from onshore storage sites appears overamplified.”
The second example commonly brought up regarding CCS safety has been a video from DNV showing a dense phase CO2 eight-inch NB pipe rupture in 2013. Eco-Justice Collaborative played it at a county board meeting, and it can be found at dnv.com. It shows a dramatic white cloud-like substance coming from a ruptured pipe.
The rupture in the video was part of a planned destructive test where they used dynamite to burst the pipe — “not a real-world scenario,” as Giles said. He also explained that the visible part of the cloud was water vapor, caused by the cold carbon dioxide melting, like dry ice.
The DNV website supports this, saying, “The experiment was conducted in the safe environment of the DNV Spadeadam Research and Testing centre to assess the consequences of such ruptures in terms of mass outflow, crater formation and dense gas dispersion. The viewer should note that the extents of the visible plume do not necessarily represent the extents of the dense gas hazard.”
The testing was done to help improve pipeline safety, and the group that conducted it is actually a consultant for the Navigator project to help them design a safer pipeline system. Giles compared the video to the government videos “back in the day” of car crash tests with cars going at excessive speeds, which aimed to improve car safety features.
“If you just look at those videos [the car crash test videos] in isolation, they look kind of scary,” Giles said, “but that was the point of the videos and the point of the test; it was a planned destructive test. Same thing on this pipeline and the video out there. It’s been really taken out of context.”
Misinformation has been an ongoing battle for Navigator.
“It is concerning to us that much of the opposition to Heartland Greenway is based on fears driven by inaccurate and misleading information that is verifiably false,” Alec Messina, an attorney at Hepler Broom helping with Navigator’s government relationships at the state and local levels, wrote in a letter to the Christian County board and the Christian County State’s Attorney on May 13, 2022.
In the coming months, Navigator plans to be more active in the area with meetings and mailings, making it their goal to be as accessible as possible to answer questions and address concerns.
In Christian County, the placement of the dump site has been a particular concern for safety. Bruce Brockelsby, one of the volunteers in charge of Christian County Citizens to Protect the Aquifer, pointed out that the injection and storage site will be about two miles north of Taylorville.
“The high school is on the north side of town,” Brockelsby said. “So is that a concern to me? Yes. Should it be a concern to Taylorville people? I should think so. From what I’ve read, it’s a colorless, odorless gas, and how do you know whether it’s leaking? I mean, they say it’s solid rock down 5,000 feet, but how do they know?”
Christian County Citizens to Protect the Aquifer have put up signs, attended meetings, and talked to farmers and landlords, and Brockelsby said the majority of the farmers and landlords are not in favor of the pipeline.
“They [Navigator] aren’t living here, but we are,” Brockelsby said.
Opposition has also voiced worries about the amount of taxpayer money going into the project. The Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines expresses that the tax credits to the companies for completing this project are “at the expense of the taxpayer, who also bears the brunt of the risk.”
“Another concern is in the United States we’ve got these guidelines and things, so what are these other countries doing?” Brockelsby said. “Now, I don’t know, but are we breathing their air or are they breathing our air? I mean, I’m sure we should keep the air as clean as we can, but should the taxpayer in the United States be the one paying the bill?”
Another concern Brockelsby and other farmers brought up was the possible damage to water tiles. As the Fairfield Soil and Water Conservation District explains, “Field tile is tubing or pipe buried in the ground to convey subsurface water to an outlet such as a stream or ditch.” Farmers use it to make soil conditions more uniform and desirable. Brockelsby explained that if tiling isn’t repaired correctly after the new pipes are installed or if the pipes are installed at the right distance, the damages could be expensive to repair and long-lasting. “We’re making decision now for our kids and grandkids,”
Brockelsby said. “That’s the reason — for the future construction of if we want to build something on our property. They’re shutting the door on a lot of opportunities for the future generations.”Brockelsby expressed a distrust of big businesses like Navigator, as other companies have come and caused damage without fixing it. “I just think that we’re not being told all the facts,” Brockelsby said. Navigator has also promised thousands of good-paying construction employment opportunities. However, Brockelsby worries that hiring locally for those short-term jobs would take skilled employees away from local companies and damage the county’s economy. When asked if he thinks it would be better for Navigator to bring in their own people instead of hiring local, Brockelsby said he “would rather see the local people get a chance.” Before they can start any building, Navigator must get permissions from landowners, as well as permits from various levels of government, including the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Illinois Commerce Commission and the US EPA. They will also need to work with the county on “mutually acceptable” zoning ordinances, as Giles worded. An agricultural impact mitigation agreement will specifically spell out soil restoration and protection of farmland. “These are some of the most rigorous permits that exist,” Giles said, “and they’re designed to protect underground sources of drinking water and to make sure whatever CO2 you put down the well stays in the well as designed.”Heartland Greenway anticipates filing permit applications later this year, which will begin an 18- to 24-month-long permit review process, so no construction would not begin until after that process.
The project has a an office at 913 W. Spresser St. in Taylorville, and they can be reached by email at info@heartlandgreenway or phone at 217-777-1870. Eco-Justice Collaborative can be reached at 773-556-3417/3418 or through forms on their various websites.
