Heartland Greenway Is Anything But Green

Posted April 28, 2022
Taylorville Daily News

Dear Editor:

I believe that it was in November that the Navigator CO2 project, Heartland Greenway, made a presentation to the county board and laid out their vision for storing CO2 under Christian County farm ground. Since that time, they have been conducting a major campaign including public meetings, mailings, and print and media ads as well as personal contacts with county board members.

Those of us who are landowners in the proposed storage area were contacted at the beginning of 2022.  Packets of information with financial offers were hand delivered to our homes.  We reviewed the packets and then did our own homework.  We discovered that there are many risks involved with this project that are being downplayed by Navigator – risks to the health and even the life of people in the area should there be a sudden leak of the line or pump station and risks to long term productivity of farm ground should there be a fissure in the rock cap and CO2 escape and return to the surface over time.

We began contacting members of the county board for the purpose of educating them on the dangers of the project.  We arranged to have a 20-minute presentation at the April meeting of the county board to convey this information.

It seems unfair to characterize the county board of “picking sides before all the information has been presented.”  Indeed, all the information has not been debated but there has been so much information presented that it is appropriate that board members would be reaching some opinions about how the county needs to proceed to protect residents.

This project can’t really be described as “economic development.”  Navigator will offer some payoffs to the county and minimal damage payments to landowners but this is largely a project to line the pockets of big oil companies and financial investors with money from taxpayers and to cause the citizens of Christian County to bear all the risks in both the present and for the coming 100 – 200 years.   Heartland Greenway is a money grab for the oil industry and is masquerading as the “green” project.  It is anything but “green”.

Karen Brockelsby
Edinburg, IL  62531