The risk of CO2 pipelines will be on presented Sept 28, 2023 in Hancock County, IL
For Immediate Release
Trent Loos, Exec. Director
515.418.8185 trentloos@gmail.com
September 21, 2023
RE: Earthquakes in the Heartland
Carthage Free Soil Coalition meeting to address CO2 safetyFree Soil Coalition
“This is not the time to relax or even breath easier in the fight against the dangerous CO2 pipelines proposed through six states in the heartland of food production” said Trent Loos, Executive Director of the Free Soil Coalition in response to recent permit denials and pipeline company announcements.
Not one of the proposed CO2 pipelines in the 6-state region including IL, IA, MN, ND, SD and NE has been permitted, and in fact, five denials have been issued.
The Free Soil Coalition will be partnering with concerned landowners in Hancock & McDonough Counties in IL and Lee County, IA at a property rights forum at the Lake Hill Winery in Carthage, IL on Thursday Sept 28, 2023 from 6:00-8:00 pm. There will be speakers from IL, IA and NE that have been in the fight from day one.
Primary concerns will not only be eminent domain and the unconstitutional taking of land with public use provisions required by the 5th Amendment, but it is also about the direct dangers that exist with compressed CO2 in a pipeline that covers 3600 miles. The South Dakota Public Utilities Committee denied the Navigator CO2 pipeline because they refused to share the risk analysis of the plume study they possess. When questioned about the study, a Navigator spokesperson responded that Midwesterners “were not smart enough to understand it.”
I believe the U.S. Geological Service holds the true answer and this is why folks in Southern Illinois should be very concerned. Since 1931, there have been 15 earthquake incidents in North Dakota. Of those, 9 have occurred since 2006. From 1973 to 2008, there were only 26 earthquake incidents in the nation but there were 193 between 2009 and 2014.
The data from North Dakota is relevant because the Bakken oil recovery region has been fracking for the past 20 years. The U.S. Geological Service indicates that, while fracking and oil recovery are not directly tied to increased earthquake activity, injecting any liquid back into the earth certainly increases the risk. They have written:
The fluid that is injected at depth is sometimes hydraulically connected to faults. When this happens, fluid pressures increase within the fault, counteracting the frictional forces on faults. This makes earthquakes more likely to occur on them.
Combine that with a research project released earlier this year from Cornell University and we have more cause for alarm. Geoscientists have long thought that water – along with shallow magma stored in Earth’s crust – drives volcanoes to erupt. Thanks to Cornell’s newly developed research tools, scientists have learned that gaseous carbon dioxide can trigger explosive eruptions.
When you look at the injection sites suggested in Southern IL and their proximity to the New Madrid Fault, already overdue to blow, it should give everyone cause to take issue with this taxpayer subsidized project that provides a tremendous amount of risk with no positive gains for the public good.
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