This story is part of a Harvest Public Media series of carbon sequestration projects. Read about it CO2 pipeline projects which is recommended throughout the Midwest and how federal tax credits help startup The projects.
Chandler Johnson
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Harvest Public Media
When Andy Alexander moved into his grandparents' farmhouse a few years ago, he knew he was moving next to the Dakota Access pipeline. It's about an eighth of a mile from his doorstep under rows of corn ripening from green to gold.
Then he learned that another conductor could go right next to him.
“They're proposing to put in a carbon dioxide pipeline that will run parallel to the oil pipeline that's currently here,” Alexander said.
The current route of a 1,300-mile pipeline proposed by Navigator CO2 Ventures cuts right between Alexander's home and the small town of Fremont, Iowa.
An oil spill would be an environmental disaster, Alexander said, but he's actually more afraid of the release of carbon dioxide. He imagines an invisible cloud of CO2 drifting near the ground, displacing oxygen along the way.
“And as it displaces that oxygen, I will no longer be able to breathe,” he said. “Depending on the weather it could spread all the way across town.”
Grand Gerlock
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Especially for Harvest Public Media
In an effort to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in the Midwest, three companies are proposing new pipelines to transport CO2 to destinations where the gas can be permanently stored in geological formations deep underground.
The projects will cut paths mostly through farmland and past small towns, and that raises safety concerns for many rural first responders.
Alexander, 43, is one of the youngest members of Fremont's small volunteer fire department. He wonders how he would reach the people at the elementary school, half a mile away, if a carbon dioxide release cut him off from the city.
“You can see the top of the school bus right there from where we are out here,” Alexander said standing on a dirt road along the pipeline's proposed route. “It kind of puts it into perspective how close this is, and it's very flat land, so CO2 can travel very quickly.”
Alexander's worst fears came to life three years ago, in an accident hundreds of miles away.
The Destruction of Satartia
The village of Satartia, Mississippi was engulfed in carbon dioxide on the night of February 22, 2020, when the Denbury Gulf Coast Pipeline was severed by a landslide. Wind and landfall carried a plume of CO2 and hydrogen sulfide farther than the company's dispersion models predicted it would go.
911 operators responded to calls from people whose cars had stalled on the freeway. A woman called a paramedic to help her friend who was lying on the ground, drooling and struggling to breathe.
First responders – mostly volunteers – evacuated 200 people from the surrounding area. Yazoo County Emergency Management Director Jack Willingham said ambulances stalled because the engines ran out of oxygen, so responders ordered the cars to move people out.
courtesy of Mississippi Emergency Management Agency
Firefighters who arrived at the scene had air tanks, but he recalled an officer who did not.
“As I listen over the radio from our command center, every time a casualty goes in and out, their breathing gets shorter and shorter,” Willingham said. “And it's like I'm about to hear my friend die on the radio at that moment, until I ordered someone else first who responded, 'Hey, go get him. Get him out of there and don't let him in again.”
No one was killed, but 45 people were taken to hospital.
Satartia has become shorthand for the fears people in cities like Fremont, Iowa have about pipeline safety. Many local responders say they lack the people and resources to deal with such a disaster themselves.
The companies behind the pipeline projects say it's unfair to compare them to Danbury's Gulf Coast.
“The Satartia incident, as unfortunate as it was, was really a breach by Denbury,” he said Jimmy Powell, the Chief Operating Officer of Summit Carbon Solutions, another company proposing a CO2 pipeline in the Midwest.
Rules and regulations
At a recent regulatory hearing in Iowa, Powell said federal law requires companies to work with local responders, and Summit has held preliminary safety meetings in counties along the proposed pipeline. That contrasts with Denbury, which had not held safety meetings with local agencies in Mississippi before its pipeline burst.
Federal regulators at the Transportation and Hazardous Materials Administration plan to propose new rules early next year to improve emergency preparedness in response to the Satartia incident.
In addition, Powell said, Summit will supply communities along the route with emergency equipment, perhaps even utility vehicles with electric motors that can operate when oxygen levels are low.
“Our team is looking into it and will be working with first responders,” Powell said. “Anything they need that is reasonable that would be necessary for a CO2 response, worst case scenario, we will provide.”
Grand Gerlock
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Especially for Harvest Public Media
Those pledges weren't enough to convince some state-level boards, which have authority over pipeline routes, to approve the project. Summit was rejected in its first attempt to get approval for its route in North Dakota and South Dakota.
The Navigator pipeline also did not receive a permit from the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. Among other reasons, the committee said “the presence of the project will increase the training demands on the already overburdened volunteer first responder departments.”
Now Navigator has asked to halt the permitting process in Iowa while the company considers revisions to its route and awaits a decision on its permit application in Illinois.
The end of the line
Navigator, whose proposed pipeline system could transport up to 15 million tons of carbon dioxide each year to permanent storage sources in central Illinois, has made its own safety commitments. The company said it will hold two trainings a year for local responders and provide them with emergency equipment.
Phil McCarty has a list of things Navigator expects to buy before the pipeline is built through Morgan County, Illinois, where he is the emergency management director. McCarty wants to have drones on hand to observe the pipeline from a distance. He also wants CO2 monitors so responders can know if the air is safe to breathe.
“I want to take control to make sure my responders have what they need to respond. That's what I'm going to focus on and I'm not going to quit until we get it done,” McCarthy said.
There are other dangers that pass through rural communities, McCarty said. Trucks and trains transport toxic materials on a daily basis.
But after Satartia, he said, pipeline companies and emergency officials know what a serious CO2 release looks like. The least they can do is be prepared.
Grand Gerlock is a reporter for Iowa Public Radio.
This story was created in collaboration with Harvest Public Media, a partnership of public media newsrooms in the Midwest. He reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
