Mississippi Today
A company wanted to store carbon under US forests. It may get its wish.
After it was twice denied permission to store carbon dioxide under U.S. Forest Service lands, a company looking to store millions of tons of the greenhouse gas in the Southeast made a strategic decision: Keep pushing.
The company, CapturePoint Solutions, leased property adjacent to forest service land in Mississippi for a project there. It started a program teaching carbon management at a school system near Forest Service land in Louisiana. And then, more than a year after it received its first denial, CapturePoint invited federal officials on an informational tour to discuss storing carbon under forest service land.
USFS officials are now considering a draft rule to allow carbon capture under U.S-owned land. The agency insists the company’s requests did not influence its decision to draft the rule โ and that no one from the Forest Service attended the informational tour.
โWe always felt and believed that the Forest Service was not following (Federal Land Policy and Management Act), and therefore continued our efforts,โ said a CapturePoint spokesperson who asked not to be named.
Thatย lawย allows some federal lands to be used for energy, including gas. Environmental groups argue the 1976 law does not cover carbon dioxide storage. They are concerned thatย CO2 could leak from the ground, injuring or killing people and animals and damaging the forest. Injecting the carbon underground, they say, amounts to an industrialization of federal land.
While it is technically possible for such a leak to occur, the chances of a leak from storage areas more than a mile underground are โextremely remote,โ CapturePoint CEO Tracy Evans told Floodlight.
Agency records reveal various requests
CapturePoint’s efforts were detailed in public records obtained from the Forest Service by CURE, a Minnesota-based nonprofit, and shared with Floodlight. CURE is opposed to carbon pipelines in Minnesota and is concerned about carbon storage under Forest Service land in its state. The records also reveal inquiries in 2022 by ExxonMobil to stash carbon under the Sam Houston National Forest in Texas.
The Carbon Capture Coalition says the United States won’t be able to meet 2050 greenhouse gas reduction targets unless it allows federal land to be used for carbon storage. The pro-carbon capture coalition of more than 100 companies, unions, conservation and environmental policy organizations estimates about 130 million acres of federal lands overlay suitable geology for the secure storage of captured carbon dioxide. The Forest Service manages 21% of that land.
CapturePoint applied to inject carbon under the Kisatchie National Forest in central Louisiana in 2021 under its previous corporate name, Authentic Reductions. CapturePoint also applied to inject carbon under the Delta National Forest in Mississippi in 2022.
The applications were rejected for the same reason โ such a permit would allow a permanent use of Forest Service land, something the agency has historically not allowed.
New carbon capture rule on tap
Now, more than three years after the company began its push, the Forest Service is in the middle of changes that could allow the storage of the greenhouse gas under millions of acres of Forest Service land indefinitely.
The comment period for the draft rule ended in January. The Forest Service is currently reviewing the comments, agency spokesperson Catherine McRae said.
Both CapturePoint and the Forest Service agree: No agency employees ended up attending the tour the company held of the Kisatchie and Delta forests in 2022. CapturePoint said it had no direct input on the creation of the draft rules. And McRae said the company’s requests did not prompt the Forest Service to propose the draft rule.
The email correspondence in the records obtained by CURE included draft applications from CapturePoint to inject carbon under the two forests. In both, CapturePoint offered $1 per ton of injected carbon. In the Kisatchie National Forest, CapturePoint proposed injecting up to 50 million tons over a 12- to 20-year period โ which it said is equivalent to removing the emissions from 10 million cars a year. In the Delta forest, the company said it wanted to inject 6-12 million tons over 12 years.
The Inflation Reduction Act offers companies that capture and store carbon dioxide from $60 to $180 per ton in tax credits. Evans told Floodlight $1 per ton was offered when subsidies were lower, but there are mechanisms in place to increase the payments if subdies increased.
โSome of the lobbying was sort of surprising,โ said Hudson Kingston, legal director of CURE. He said the company โsucked up toโ federal employees by offering to take them on the tour. โIt’s how regulatory capture works.โ
Victoria Bogdan Tejeda, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, had a similar reaction.
โOne could really infer that there was a lot of industry pressure or influence to try to get access to this pore (underground) space,โ Bogdan Tejeda said. โAnd that, so far, they were successful, at least with getting a rule out there that would make their applications possible.โ
CapturePoint doesn’t see it that way. Evans argued that storing carbon under Forest Service and other federal lands makes sense given the federal government‘s โdesire to have CCS move forward.โ
Feds already allow some carbon storage
In addition to approaching the Forest Service, CapturePoint also inquired about storing carbon under a U.S. Army base in central Louisiana, he said.
Some federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, already allow carbon to be stored under their lands under the federal land management law. In 2022, the BLM granted its first approval to ExxonMobil to permanently store carbon under land in Wyoming, a project that remains controversial.
While CapturePoint says the law should also apply to the Forest Service, Bogdan Tejeda said it’s not that straightforward. The law does not mention carbon dioxide or permanent storage, and historically, the Forest Service has interpreted its own authority as barring any permanent use, she said.
November’s draft rule by the Forest Service surprised many agency observers, who say it bucks precedent. While there are leases on Forest Service for oil and gas drilling, for instance, those leases are for a set number of years, not for a permanent use, Bogdan Tejeda said.
โI’m not seeing anything in the rule that they (USFS) issued, showing why that would change,โ she said.
Among the concerns over storing carbon under forest service land is the potential to endanger tribes’ access to fish and other food, which the federal government agreed to protect in exchange for seizing vast tracts of Native American land, according to the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon.
Bogdan Tejeda still has a lot of questions, including who will monitor the stored carbon after CapturePoint is gone โ and who will be liable if something goes wrong.
โIt gives industry essentially a place to dump their carbon dioxide waste, benefit from the tax credits, and they don’t have to deal with the messiness of trying to get permission from property owners and eminent domain.โ
The federal government says, โHey, just come on over here,’ โ she said, โand that’s a form of a subsidy.โ
Floodlightย is a nonprofit newsroom that partners with local and national outlets to investigateย the powerful interests stalling climate action.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
State-funded project to improve Jackson cul-de-sac near lawmakerโs home moves forward
A state-funded project to upgrade an already well-paved north Jackson cul-de-sac that runs by a Mississippi lawmaker’s house will go forward, a group of officials who oversee the project said on Thursday.
Rebekah Staples, the director of the Capitol Complex Improvement District’s Project Advisory Committee, said at the group’s latest meeting that the project to repave the road near the legislator’s home and four other projects the Legislature allocated money for will proceed โas quickly as possible,โ though some of the details are still being worked out.
โI respect the Legislature and the governor passing the law,โ Staples said. โWe’re here to follow the law.โ
A Mississippi Today investigation revealed that House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, a Republican from Senatobia, helped steer $400,000 in state taxpayer funds to repave Simwood Place in Jackson, where he owns a house.
Simwood Place, located in the affluent LoHo neighborhood of northeast Jackson, is roughly one-tenth of a mile long, with only 14 single-family homes.
State lawmakers and the local Jackson City Council member who represents the area previously told Mississippi Today they did not ask state leaders to allocate money for the Simwood Place project. Lamar has declined to answer specific questions about the Simwood project but said any โinnuendo of wrongdoing is baseless.โ
A spending bill passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves routed projects through the CCID committee. The advisory committee is housed in the Department of Finance and Administration.
DFA is the primary agency responsible for state government financial and administrative operations, including employee payroll, employee insurance and maintaining state buildings. However, the Legislature has also tasked the agency with overseeing some operations of the CCID.
Jackson City Councilwoman Virgi Lindsay is a member of the CCID committee and said she wants the five projects earmarked by the Legislature to proceed, but she does not want the committee to neglect the other projects they are currently overseeing.
The CCID is funded through a 9% sales tax diversion and recommends to DFA and other state leaders which projects to fund. Efforts to expand the CCID and establish a separate court system within it have drawn outcry from several Jackson citizens and officials who view it as a state takeover of the more affluent areas of Jackson and claim the state otherwise gives the city few resources.
Liz Welch, the director of DFA, said at the meeting that the projects the committee has prioritized and the projects the Legislature has appropriated money for will run concurrently with one another.
โWe will not let these projects languish,โ Welch said. โThat’s not what we do. We’re going to come up with an internal process, and of course, we will discuss it with the advisory committee. But we’re going to do both.โ
It’s unclear exactly when DFA and the CCID committee will solicit bids for the project, but Staples and Welch said they hope to provide a substantive update to the rest of the committee by its next meeting on January 16.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Reddit AMA recap: โTrey Wayโ with Geoff Pender and Taylor Vance
Mississippi Today politics editor Geoff Pender and reporter Taylor Vance answered your questions on Reddit about how powerful House Rep. Trey Lamar helped steer millions of taxpayer dollars to improve the private country club neighborhood where he lives and nearby golf course.
Taxpayers are also footing the bill for another state-funded project that will improve a quiet, already well-paved Jackson street where Lamar also owns a house.
Read their answers below and visit the story summary that will direct you to the full investigation.
Some questions have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What can be done to curb Lamar’s power? Will any of the higher-ups in our state government demand that he step down or be removed from his position?
Click for Geoff Pender’s answer.
Lamar does appear to have unprecedented power over local projects spending. A House Ways and Means chairman, by due course, would have a lot of say over local projects funded with borrowing (Ways and Means is in charge of borrowing and taxes). But Lamar, according to numerous fellow lawmakers, has huge sway over the projects even when using state cash instead of borrowing.
House Speaker Jason White is the grantor of this power to Lamar, and would have to be the source of any reduction in that power. I would posit this system is not the best, most efficient or fair way to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars each year or to decide what projects are done.
Speaker White and Lt. Gov. Hosemann have expressed desire to increase transparency and efficiency in state government. This is an area where they could have a profound and immediate impact.
Click for Taylor Vance’s answer.
This decision is largely left up to voters in Tate County and House Speaker Jason White. Speaker White has the power to remove Rep. Lamar as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and appoint someone else to lead the committee, but that’s incredibly unlikely. It’s extremely rare for House speakers to replace a committee chairman in the middle of a four-year term.
Q: What was the moment during this investigation that made each of you say, โI cannot believe what I am hearing/reading?โ
Click for Geoff Pender’s answer.
Has to be when I first ran across the โTateCounty Watchdogsโ Facebook page, which was a few weeks into us beginning to look into these issues. It’s not common for state spending/work to cause such a response among the citizenry of an area.
Click for Taylor Vance’s answer.
For me, it was when I was driving down Simwood Place in Jackson. I was stunned that our lawmakers voted to spend $400,000 upgrading a road that is already in decent condition (by the city of Jackson’s standards.) There are several major arterial roads in Jackson that are filled with potholes and cracks, yet this is where state lawmakers chose to spend money.
Q: Have you ever been threatened or intimidated when doing one of these investigations?
Click for Geoff Pender’s answer.
I should note we were not threatened or intimidated in working on these articles. I have in the past been threatened over stories I was working on (someone once left a threatening message and fired a gun on my answering machine, for instance) but that was many years ago, and I don’t recall ever being physically threatened over work on any stories related to the Legislature.
Intimidation can be a more subjective term and come in far more subtle forms, but I’ve never been easily intimidated.
Click for Taylor Vance’s answer.
I’ve only been a professional reporter since 2019, but, no, I’ve not been threatened or intimidated with an investigation such as this. People have tried to gaslight me or tell me that something isn’t a story, but I’ve never been threatened by anyone.
Q: What is the wrap up process on an investigation like this like? When you have the final draft, do you all do something to celebrate a job well done?
Click for Taylor Vance’s answer.
When we’re close to publishing, we have a final run-through with editors to make sure we have documentation to support the reporting. We then discuss what is the best way to package the story online to make it as engaging as possible for readers. After the story publishes, we think of potential follow ups (and may enjoy a libation or two.)
Q: Has State Auditor Shad White or AG Fitch shown any interest in your investigation?
Click for Geoff Pender’s answer.
No. They have not.
Q: What other representatives went along with this? He couldn’t have done this without approval of others.
Click for Geoff Pender’s answer.
Technically, yes, other lawmakers overwhelmingly sign off on such spending. It’s passed as a legislative bill. However, the realpolitik is, the vast majority of lawmakers do not know, and could not easily discern, many of the hundreds of projects and programs funded in such a bill.
Plus, it’s designed as a go-along to get-along process. You want project XYZ in your district, so you vote for the bill without much question about other spending in it. Not to mention, it’s done at the last minute, sometimes literally, in a legislative session.
Q: Are you able to confirm if there are more stories of this type coming down the pike?
Click for Geoff Pender’s answer.
We are continuing to work on these and similar issues so, yes, there are likely more stories of this type to come. As always, we solicit any tips on issues involving state government and politics in Mississippi and will follow up on them. Email us at gpender@mississippitoday.org and tvance@mississippitoday.org
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
3 dead and 4 injured in collapse of Mississippi bridge being prepped for demolition
MENDENHALL, Miss. (AP) โ Three people were killed and four were seriously injured Wednesday when a bridge in Mississippi that was closed nearly a month ago collapsed while a work crew was prepping it for demolition, authorities said.
The bridge over the Strong River on State Route 149 in Simpson County, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) south of Jackson, had been closed to traffic since Sept. 18 as part of a bridge replacement project, the Mississippi Department of Transportation said in a news release.
Gov. Tate Reeves said in a post on social media late Wednesday that first responders from the county and โother state assets have been on the scene at the tragedyโ where they’d confirmed at least three fatalities and multiple injuries.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a social media post late Wednesday that the Federal Highway Administration was โengaging state officials concerningโ the โpremature collapse during demolition of a bridge on State Route 149 in Mississippi.โ
Simpson County Sheriff Paul Mullins told WLBT-TV three people were killed and four critically injured.
Terry Tutor, the Simpson County coroner, told the New York Times that seven men were working on the bridge, using heavy machinery to tear it down, when it gave way and plummeted nearly 40 feet (12 meters). He said three of the men died, and four were injured, the Times reported.
Mullins and Tutor didn’t immediately respond to messages Wednesday night from The Associated Press.
A call to the construction company, T.L. Wallace Construction, was unanswered Wednesday evening, and it was not possible to leave a message.
Department of Transportation spokesperson Anna Ehrgott said the agency โwould share more information with the public as it becomes available.โ
The department said one of its inspectors was at the work site when the bridge collapsed, and that person was unharmed.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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