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Greenville opposes burying CO2
Members of Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration with a sign that reads "No CO2 Waste in Darke County."
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by Sarah Gardner
They laugh about it now, but when Greenville residents heard about a federally-funded "carbon sequestration" project...
"We were scared," says Frankie Gilmore, a local mailman.
Gilmore and many of his neighbors in rural Ohio had never heard of "carbon sequestration." But in 2008, scientists from Battelle, a major R&D lab, came to call. They wanted to demonstrate that you could capture and bury CO2 emissions miles beneath the earth. The government is looking to apply the technology widely to burning coal.
But local newspaper editor Christina Chalmers says townspeople were grumbling from the get-go.
"A lot of people did not even believe in global warming," says Chalmers. "So they just thought it was a bunch of garbage."
Battelle held several public meetings but townspeople were uncomfortable. It wasn't clear to them who was responsible if anything went wrong. There was a slight chance the CO2 injections could cause earthquakes. And what if the CO2 somehow leaked into the water supply? Battelle assured them quakes and leakage were an extremely low risk. But by 2009 a couple of Internet-savvy grandmothers had started Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration.
Co-founder Jan Teaford wrote their blog.
"This is our home. We live here. Those people don't live here. They're never going to live here," says Teaford. "And we felt we had a right to protect it and we should have a say in what goes on here."
The group wrote letters to the editor, knocked on doors. They even held a prayer rally. And hundreds of lawn signs reading "No CO2 Waste in Darke County" peppered the town. On August 19th, Battelle scrapped the project, citing "business considerations."
Read the second part of this series on Battelle and the lessons of Greenville. And the final part of the series. Plus, listen to an audio slideshow about the people for and against the Greenville project. Click to listen.
Although it's easy to target the residents of Greenville as Bible-toting, ignorant small town people with small minds, I remind you that this kind of problem crosses political and geographic lines. Regardless of a person's political views, it is a hard pill to swallow when you are expected to store EVERYONE'S waste or bear a national burden. To expect residents of a town to take on a potentially dangerous storage method under their feet and give them grief for it is unfairly judgmental. And it reminds me of the Cape Winds project. A loud voice at the opposite end of the political spectrum, Ted Kennedy, was vehemently opposed to placing energy-generating wind mills far off the coast of his vacation home because it might affect his VIEW. Carbon emissions need to be addressed. Even if SOME of the residents of Greenville don't "believe" in global warming, that is hardly the point. The point, and the crux of the problem, is that we ALL contribute to the problem of global warming, and regardless of our political views, none of us want to be the ones to disproportionately bear the burden. I grew up in Greenville. My parents still live there. I have never agreed with the political and religious mainstream there, but I definitely feel at home there. And I cannot judge the residents for rejecting YOUR and MY carbon emissions.
People in neighboring counties and others who work in Darke County, Ohio should thank the Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration for protecting their turf, too. We not only stopped Battelle's experiment, but defied the Federal Department of Energy giant.
Listening to this series just makes me laugh. I mean really, oil wells never blow up and the stock market is a safe investment. These things will never cause a problem, but when one does have a problem, it's HUGE. I just love the risk assessment that the story includes while it, and the foolish commenters, makes the citizens look like hillbillies.
Two lines from the story were in stark contrast for me:
"A lot of people did not even believe in global warming"
and
"They even held a prayer rally"
It's funny how some discount the effects of CO2 on the climate but pray to what I'm assuming is the subject of a fantastical story about someone who rose from the dead. It's hard to figure out why what some people choose to believe in.
Greenville is the county seat of Darke County Ohio, aptly named. Educational support is dismal,the kids learn by torchlight. The ethanol plant in question spews tons of CO2 over the community. Choosing between science and dogma, sequestration or political hot air is not realistic in a darke county with out intensive education, pitched at a 3rd grade reading level. Batell must field an intense grassroots PR effort to secure success in a future test area. ...Please withhold my name from any broadcast,(published in a blog is fine; they don't read much but they do occasionally listen to the radio). I work in Darke County and avoid pitchforks and torches. Thanks, Tim
