Carbon Capture Project Rejected Over Groundwater Fears

A controversial plan to inject tonnes of wastewater into Australia’s Great Artesian Basin has been rejected amid fears it would cause “irreversible” change. Mining giant Glencore’s CTSCo had planned to capture carbon dioxide from the coal-fired Millmerran power station in southern Queensland, liquefy it and store it 2.3 kilometres underground. They wanted to pump more than 300,000 tonnes of wastewater into the Precipice Sandstone aquifer near Moonie, west of Brisbane, in a three-year trial. Glencore argued no damage would have been caused by injecting the waste product into the aquifer, a body of rock that holds groundwater. The multinational said it would have been isolated from other aquifers that were tapped for agricultural or human use in the basin, which is a water source for 180,000 inland people....