Today, California’s Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM) opened a five-day comment period on its final draft of the state’s new CO2 pipeline safety regulations. The OSFM was tasked with crafting these regulations after the California legislature prematurely lifted the state’s moratorium on CO2 pipelines last fall, greenlighting CO2 pipelines and carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects across the state. 

Environmental justice and climate advocacy groups have been calling on the OSFM to prioritize community safety and climate considerations when crafting these regulations and will be submitting comments. 

“At a time when we have no updated federal regulations for CO2 pipelines, California has a unique and critical opportunity to set the national standard for CO2 pipeline regulation,” said Food & Water Watch Northern California Organizer Isabel Penman. “The final draft regulations do not do enough to protect our communities from the buildout of these unnecessary projects in the case of a pipeline failure.”

California environmental justice and climate advocacy groups sent a number of letters to the OSFM outlining a variety of concerns with CO2 pipeline buildout including the potential threats to water quality and public health. Groups also sent a letter calling for regulations to be grounded in a community-focused framework. 

“CO2 pipeline ruptures don’t give people time to react, there’s no smell, no color, no warning,” said Central California Environmental Justice Network Policy Associate Ileana Navarro. “Our communities in the San Joaquin Valley are already overburdened by pollution, and we cannot accept regulations that leave us without the equipment, notice, or protections we need to stay safe. These rules need to put public health first, not industry convenience.”

California’s moratorium on CO2 pipelines was enacted in 2022 to protect California communities from dangerous, woefully inadequate federal pipeline safety regulations. SB 614 lifted the moratorium and charged the Office of the State Fire Marshal with creating CO2 pipeline regulations for the first time in California under a shortened emergency rule-making timeline. There are around two dozen proposed CCS projects in California, most of which would be located in areas of the state already overburdened by pollution.

The dangers of CO2 pipelines were exposed by a disastrous pipeline rupture in Satartia, Mississippi, which sent dozens of people to the hospital and left some with permanent disabilities from CO2 exposure. The federal pipeline agency, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHSMA), pledged to create new CO2 pipeline safety regulations after that incident but has yet to do so.