WABASH, Ind. (WANE) — The Wabash County Plan Commission hosted a meeting to discuss a moratorium for a bioprocessing facility on Thursday at the Wabash County Courthouse. The facility is meant to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. POET Pure has partnered with the development team, Vault 44.01, with plans to build a carbon capture site in North Manchester, IN. The project is in an initial vetting phase and both companies expect at least two years before operations are at full capacity. According to POET's website, the bioprocessing facility uses carbon capture, utilization and storage or CCUS. "CCUS is the separation and capture of CO2 from industrial processes and its reuse or storage. Through this process, CO2 that otherwise would go into the atmosphere can be sequestered in deep geological formations like sandstone and limestone. The CO2 occupies the small pore spaces in the formations deep below multiple layers of solid cap rock, where it remains safely underground for millions of years." According to the IPCC, CCUS could make up between 10% and 55% of the total carbon mitigation effort by the year 2020. The practice aims to lower carbon levels in the atmosphere, a major greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. There are some concerns in the community over the safety of storing captured CO2. This is due to the possibility of leakages from the underground storage and environmental contamination. WANE 15 spoke with Josh Leffel, who lives a mile northeast of the current POET facility. He attended the meeting, alongside the Citizens Action Coalition, which is working to halt the project. "I don't want this stuff in the ground," said Leffel. "The neighbors don't want it in the ground."  He fears the worst, pondering what protections neighboring residents have if there was a leak or some sort of contamination. "We don't know where the CO2 is going to go," said Leffel. "When it's pressurized in that way, of course, it's always going to want to push out. They're telling us this stuff won't leave a .6 mile radius. The problem is you're going to put in 250,000 metric tons every year, compressed between 1,400 psi and 2,000 psi down there every single year for twelve years. It's very highly unlikely that it's going to stay in a point six mile radius." Leffel mentioned a carbon dioxide spill in Mississippi that sent dozens to the hospital. It involved a carbon pipeline. Vault 44.01 Vice President of Project Development, Craig Hall, said at a plan commission meeting in March, "There is no pipeline involved in this project... there's a compressor on the facility and a small 4' flowline that connects the compressor to an onsite well." All activity will be on Poet Pure private property. At the plan commission's meeting in March, both companies presented their proposals.Presenters said that community members could expect yearly checks on the storage wells, making sure they were free from leaks, and quarterly tests on water quality. Here is a link to the meeting. WANE 15 has reached out to POET Pure and Vault 44-O-1 for comment and has yet to hear back. ...read more read less