CAMBRIDGE, Illinois — Wolf Carbon Solutions is working on a proposed 300-mile pipeline that would connect the ADM plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to the one in Decatur, Illinois. ADM is a food processing company.
Before Wolf Carbon Solutions is scheduled to go before the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) early next year, residents in Henry and Stark counties are sounding the alarm.
"If we don't fight it now, it's gonna get worse," Henry County landowner and farmer Jim Huffman said. "I live a half-mile on the east side of the proposed route...This half-mile is not going to be out of the plume area. So if there is a rupture, our family, our neighbors, they're going to be involved with it."
Residents have two concerns over the CO2 pipeline: safety issues and eminent domain.
CO2 is odorless and extremely dangerous to inhale. In 2020, a CO2 pipeline burst in Satartia, Mississippi, sending 45 people to the hospital.
"If it ruptures, it's CO2, it's odorless," Stark County landowner Leslea Carroll said. "You become disoriented, is what I understand."
While safety is the main concern, residents are also concerned over the fact that Wolf Carbon Solutions wants to use eminent domain to acquire the farmland the pipeline would sit under.
"If it was building a new interstate or whatever, and we needed another cloverleaf, that would be eminent domain," Huffman said. " But this is going to a private company."
The reason Wolf wants to store the CO2 in Decatur is because of the Simon Sandstone Formation that's able to absorb the liquidized version of CO2. Residents have been told the eminent domain payment would be a one-time thing, which would be negotiated between Wolf and each individual landowner. They have not been told yet roughly what that price would be.
The ICC has until May to decide if they will grant a permit to Wolf to begin work. News 8 reached out to Wolf for comment but has not heard back.