Despite numerous and compelling testimonies to the contrary, the Iowa Utilities Board issued its approval for privately owned Summit Carbon Solution to use eminent domain to lay its liquid carbon dioxide pipeline across Iowa. It was argued by many that the eminent domain process should only be available to a government body for accommodating public utilities and road work, not for private companies.
This approval shows how the dollar overcomes common sense and the desire of 859 landowners who did not accept Summit Carbon Solutions’ right of way offers. Those 859 landowners (approximately 25% of the total landowners approached by Summit) have their own reasons to be anti-pipeline.
Those reasons are varied and include but are not limited to the pipeline impeding on “Century” farmland; potentially routing through, under or near conservation designated lands either by the landowner or a county agency; the real and documented impact of soil compaction on farm land caused by heavy machinery which reduces soil vitality and crop production; and finally, citizens’ safety and well-being should the pipeline burst causing an unknown volume of a carbon dioxide gas plume that is invisible and would cause death to anyone located within or traveling into the plume.
All of these combined should have outweighed the so-called benefit of Summit Carbon Solutions need to get “tax credits.”
One statement the Iowa Utilities Board made in the executive summary of its 507 page “Final Decision and Order,” says it all to those doubting their motive. It reads, “ … the Board found that the service to be provided by Summit Carbon will promote the public convenience and necessity.”
How is the pipeline convenient to the landowners? It isn’t. It is only convenient to Summit with tax credits and to the ethanol plant owners with the same, neither of whom are in the “public” domain. The farmers are not part of the equation, as they’ll still sell their corn to the ethanol plants whether or not a pipeline exists.
I encourage everyone to set aside some time to read through IUB’s final report and note the comments and IUB’s responses to them. The IUB’s 507 page report is available at https://iuc.iowa.gov/press-release/2024-06-25/final-decision-issued-pipeline
The Izaak Walton League is all for the use of renewable fuels. We are on record, in our published “Conservation Policies” of supporting ethanol as an additive to fuel as long as adjustments are made in the fuel volatility to prevent increased production of smog and ozone. The league is also on record of being opposed to pipelines that are used to move liquid carbon dioxide for storage. As such, we find IUB’s approval a complete failure of “common sense.”
Dale Braun is President of the Iowa Division of the Izaak Walton League of America. The Iowa Division has nearly 7,000 members
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