Bill banning carbon sequestration near Mahomet Aquifer clears General Assembly
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By JADE AUBREY
Capitol News Illinois
SPRINGFIELD — A bill that bans carbon sequestration over, under or through portions of the Mahomet Aquifer passed out of the Illinois General Assembly on Tuesday.
The bill has been a point of contention in the Statehouse during this year’s legislative session, after it was found that a leak occurred during carbon injections carried out by ADM, a Decatur-based agriculture giant.
Carbon sequestration is a relatively new technological process that pumps liquified carbon dioxide deep underground for long-term storage. Proponents say it could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions for high-emissions industries like ethanol production.
The ADM injection site, which opened in 2011, received the first federal permit for “geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide” in 2017. Since then, the project has stored more than 4.5 million tons of carbon dioxide more than a mile underground.
Although the leak did not take place in the Mahomet Aquifer area, roughly 8,000 metric tons of liquid carbon dioxide and other ground fluid escaped the area it was permitted to be in. ADM temporarily paused carbon injections in October after another issue with a well was identified.
The Mahomet Aquifer supplies water to hundreds of thousands of people in central Illinois. Estimates for the number of Illinois residents served daily by the aquifer range from 500,000 to 1 million people.
In 2015, portions of the aquifer in 14 Illinois counties were designated as a sole source aquifer by the EPA, since contamination of the aquifer could cause significant public health risk. That EPA designation also indicates that there are no “reasonably available alternative drinking water sources” that could be used if the water in the aquifer were contaminated.
Senate Bill 1723 passed on Tuesday with bipartisan support. The bill was spearheaded by Sen. Paul Faraci, D-Champaign, and Sen. Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet. It comes after Illinois lawmakers passed a law last year allowing carbon sequestration anywhere in Illinois.
“Proposals under consideration by the U.S. EPA today would store 50 times the amount of carbon that has been stored at the ADM facility under the Mahomet Aquifer,” Andrew Rehn, the climate policy director of Prairie Rivers Network, said during a Senate committee hearing on the bill in March. “Last year’s bill leaves a critical gap. It says you have to replace drinking water if you damage it through your carbon sequestration activity, and the sole source designation means that there is no alternative.”
Charles Harvey, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke on the dangers of carbon sequestration in the wake of the recent ADM leak during the committee hearing. He called the ADM injection facility an “experiment,” as the injection of carbon at such a depth had never been done before.
He said the pressure and depth of the injections led to fissures in both the injection pipes and the levels of rock the carbon was being pumped into and stored under. Since carbon dioxide is a gas, he said it began to seep through the cracks and the fissures and rise back to the surface, which began the leak.
“To do this, it had to move at an alarming velocity of at least three meters a day to have reached it in the four months that after injections for when the seismic inference was made,” Harvey said. “Now, the original report predicted that with 90% confidence this would not happen.”
Due to the aquifer’s sole source designation, bill proponents also argued that central Illinois residents can’t afford the water to be at risk.
“Eighty-five percent of the geographic land mass in the state of Illinois can be used for carbon sequestration. The aquifer is a very small piece of that, it’s just kind of the width of Central Illinois,” Rose said. “You can sequester north or south of this without putting anybody’s water in jeopardy.”
Opponents of the bill argued that since the Mahomet Aquifer sits at roughly 200 feet under the surface, it isn’t at risk to leaks, as carbon injections pump the gas thousands of feet underground.
“The geology under and around the Mahomet Aquifer is the best geology to ensure that thousands of feet below the aquifer — we’re not talking immediately under the aquifer, we’re talking thousands of feet, up to a mile below — is the best geology to ensure that the carbon capturing is taking place,” Donovan Griffith, the vice president of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, said during the committee. “It’s the best in the state.”
The bill passed out of the Senate in April 55-0. It now awaits approval from the governor after passing out of the House on Tuesday with a vote of 91-19.
IMA released a statement on X following the passage of SB1723 urging Gov. JB Pritzker to veto the bill.
“Carbon capture and sequestration is a safe and proven technology that is key to maintaining economic growth and advancing our state’s decarbonization goals. We urge Gov. JB Pritzker to veto this legislation, which discourages investment in clean energy projects including sustainable aviation fuel,” said Mark Denzler, President and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.