Oregon Public Broadcasting

Early Northwest farmers called them the “scablands”  --  places where the basalt rock was so thick and exposed that planting crops was out of the question.

Now, scientists say that black rock -- once considered worthless -- might help the world combat global warming. Correspondent Anna King reports.

Near Wallula Gap in Southeast Washington, geologists are drilling about a mile down into solid rock. They plan to trap about 1000 tons of greenhouse gasses down there.

It’s a federal project and the work will cost about $6 million. It’s the first large-scale test of its kind in the nation.

Charlotte Sullivan is a geologist. She’s with Battelle Laboratory in Richland. She says Washington, Oregon and Idaho are perfect places to trap carbon dioxide because there are many porous layers of basalt deep underground.

Charlotte Sullivan: “We kind of have a Cinderella story. All this ugly black rock does more than just hold the CO2 when we inject it -- it actually turns it to mineral. So there is even less question of it escaping.”

Sullivan says she will be monitoring the site for two years to watch how the CO2 reacts with the rock.

Some critics say the science is sound. But they worry that capturing CO2 emissions and injecting it underground might be too expensive to really work.

One unanswered question: Who owns the rights to deep underground basalt flows?