Carbon Capture Plan Draws Conservationist Concerns

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service wants to open national forest lands to permanent carbon dioxide storage, alarming environmentalists and advocates who say the project would pose significant health risks to surrounding communities and the environment.

As Pam Radtke explains in an article for Floodlight, republished in Grist, the Forest Service says “storage can be managed safely, and such regulatory changes are needed to meet the nation’s climate goals.” However, carbon dioxide pipelines have ruptured in the past, hospitalizing 49 people in one incident in Mississippi in 2020. “Concentrations of the gas, which is odorless and heavier than oxygen, can also prevent combustion engines from operating. [Victoria] Bodan Tejeda, of the Center for Biological Diversity, worries that people even a mile or two from a carbon dioxide leak could start suffocating and have no way to escape.”

Permanent storage would also go against decades of Forest Service policy, which typically only permits temporary use of forest lands. “Drilling rigs and heavy equipment would be brought into forests to evaluate whether the spaces under the forests were suitable for carbon storage. Trees would have to come down to make way for that equipment, and many more trees would likely be felled to make way for the pipelines.”

According to the Forest Service, “the Nov. 3 proposal would allow it to evaluate such permanent storage requests; it is not currently considering any specific proposals to store carbon under its lands.”