The Illinois legislature is considering banning carbon dioxide sequestration near underground drinking water supplies after leaks were revealed at a carbon sequestration site in Decatur.

However, the bill, SB 3968, is now stalled in the Illinois Senate, multiple news outlets reported. Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, asked that the Senate’s Executive Committee pause until senators can learn more about the process and its risks, according to Capital News Illinois.

Carbon capture and sequestration is meant to permanently store the greenhouse gas underground instead of releasing it to the atmosphere, but it has never been proven to be effective or economically feasible at a large scale.

Two state senators, Paul Faraci, D-Champaign, and Chapin Rose, R-Mahomet, introduced the bill to protect the Mahomet Aquifer, the most important underground drinking water supply in central Illinois. The carbon sequestration industry has targeted Illinois for disposal wells and pipelines that would transport carbon dioxide across the state, drawing a backlash from farmers and landowners.

The proposed legislation came after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notified agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) that it was violating safe drinking water rules due to underground carbon dioxide leaks at its facility in Decatur, the first major carbon storage site of its kind in the U.S.
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The EPA’s proposed order requires ADM to evaluate how carbon dioxide migrated into an “unauthorized zone” roughly 5,000 feet deep, among other measures.