Can the Safe Drinking Water Act Carry the Water for the Carbon Capture and Sequestration Industry?
Also see “With Time Dwindling, Gaps in EPA’s Proposed Carbon Sequestration Framework Remain Unchallenged” for an update on this topic. In about one month, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will close the comment period on a proposed framework for regulating underground injection and long-term geological sequestration of carbon dioxide (CO2) under its Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) authority. The proposal offers a useful starting point for thinking about many of the technical, policy and legal issues involved in capturing, liquefying, transporting, injecting and storing CO2 deep underground for the next thousand years. One alarming aspect of the proposal, however, is EPA’s acknowledgment that it still lacks the authority to address many of the most critical regulatory issues related to commercializing carbon sequestration technologies. If so, neither EPA nor Congress can afford to wait until 2010, when EPA’s final rule is expected, to start filling in the gaps. Read the rest of
