‘A stark warning’: Latest carbon dioxide leak raises concerns about safety, regulation

It wasn’t the wail of a siren or the buzz of an emergency phone alert that warned Tanya Richard a pipeline near her home was spewing poison gas. The first hint that something was wrong came from her cats, a motley collection of free-roaming felines that fled her property as the dense cloud of carbon dioxide (CO2) rolled over a rural stretch of southwest Louisiana on April 3. 

“Normally, I’ve got six kitty cats out here wanting to be fed when I come home,” said Richard, who lives just outside Sulphur, a small Calcasieu Parish town about five miles from Lake Charles. “But they were nowhere to be found. Then I started to notice no cars were passing by. I said, ‘Tanya, something strange is going on.’”

As it turned out, a 2-foot diameter pipeline at a CO2 pump station about a half mile from Richard’s house had ruptured, releasing about 107,000 gallons of the gas, which can cause drowsiness, suffocation and sometimes death. Colorless, odorless, and heavier than air, carbon dioxide can travel undetected and at lethal concentrations over large distances. 

The CO2 pipeline network is undergoing rapid expansion as companies invest in the booming carbon capture and sequestration market. With this growth come worries that communities may not be prepared or even aware of the potential for dangerous leaks. 

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