CO2 pipeline push raises alarms

Good morning, Chicago.

Navigator CO2, which proposes building a pipeline and storing millions of tons of carbon dioxide underground in central Illinois, conducted a two-month, 24/7 drilling operation to build a monitoring well across from the home of Sabrina and Ralph Jones.

Navigator says the project will fight climate change by preventing carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere. And the largest U.S. climate bill ever, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, is encouraging such projects with generous financial incentives.

But Navigator opponents, many of them landowners who don’t want to live near high-pressure pipelines carrying a potentially suffocating gas, have voiced numerous concerns, including that underground carbon storage has never before been done at this scale.

Now, Nokomis-area residents say they have yet another reason to question the project: the drilling operation outside the Joneses’ house.

Read the full story from Nara Schoenberg.

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