U.S. EPA Permit Now Expected Mid-August for Public Comment and Hearing Requests.

By Joyce Blumenshine

Local residents are looking at more concerns about the Marquis Ethanol LLC plans to inject highly pressurized CO2 north of Hennepin, Putnam County, where our HOI Group members live. The company plans appear to be for a much greater amount of CO2 injection than would be needed by their current Hennepin plant. Their proposed injection well is only for five to six years, but locals wonder what happens after that and if a second well will be planned.

Previous CO2 injection in Illinois has had serious problems and cannot be considered a success. Archer Daniels Midland’s (ADM) highly touted project with tens of millions of dollars in federal funding support had well problems after only five years in operation. CO2 moved from the deep underground location the company intended, to up higher underground. This was not disclosed by the company until later action by U.S. EPA helped the information become public. The ADM second injection well was found to be deteriorated and the company halted all injection in 2024. The ADM project was only doing about half of what was intended and was small (about 410,000 tons per year) compared to what Marquis plans (about 1 to 1.5 million tons per year).

The CO2 will be highly pressurized, putting pressure on cracks or weaknesses underground, which can be ways for it to easily move in unexpected directions either up or across. The Marquis injection well is not as deep as the ADM wells, which increases risks. There is no way the company can be sure the well will not leak or the CO2 will not move in unexpected ways underground.  An old closed injection well, operated by a steel plant, is in the area. It injected caustic chemicals into the same deep layers and the status of how far that has moved underground is not known. The village of Hennepin relies on groundwater wells and is not far south of these well locations.

Marquis' application with the U.S. EPA is heavily redacted and is missing information about the following:

• Capture site
• Piping
• Well location
• Monitoring well locations
• CO2 plume
• Area of review
• Discussion of fracturing
   

Check out Marquis's application to see just how much information has been redacted.

A fact sheet on general CO2 deep injection issues is available on The Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines website.