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Pipeline regulations pitched by Iowa Senate Republicans after years of inaction
After years of House Republicans taking the lead, Senate Republicans have introduced sweeping legislation that would address pipeline regulations and landowner rights
Mar. 4, 2025 6:48 pm, Updated: Mar. 5, 2025 7:24 am
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DES MOINES — It took a few years to join their colleagues, but once Republican lawmakers in the Iowa Senate introduced legislation addressing pipelines and landowner rights, they did not hold back.
Although, the bill is too late to impact a carbon capture pipeline project that, if completed, will traverse 39 counties in Iowa.
Republicans in the agenda-setting Iowa House majority for the past three years have passed bills aimed at bolstering landowners’ rights and further regulating proposed carbon capture pipelines in Iowa, only to see all those bills hit a legislative brick wall in the Republican-majority Senate.
The political winds regarding pipelines and landowner rights may be changing, if Tuesday is any indication. The first legislative hearing was held on a new bill in the Senate that would add more than a dozen requirements and regulations to pipeline and electric transmission line projects.
The Senate bill largely places limitation on eminent domain — the process of the government acquiring private land for use in an infrastructure project — and stronger regulations for pipeline and transmission line projects.
“In my view, what this bill does, it lays out the real concerns of landowners throughout the state of Iowa,” Iowa Sen. David Rowley, a Republican from Spirit Lake, said during a legislative hearing on the bill Tuesday at the Iowa Capitol. “I think we need to hear these voices. We need to get to the gritty and just the bottom of eminent domain (and) how we are to proceed forward.”
The bill was proposed by Iowa Sen. Jason Schultz, a Republican from Schleswig who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Dennis Guth, a Republican from Klemme, said he helped write the bill.
Pipeline projects in Iowa
Summit Carbon Solutions has proposed a carbon dioxide pipeline system that would span roughly 2,500 miles in five states — including 1,040 miles across 39 counties in Iowa — to transport liquefied carbon from ethanol plants to North Dakota for underground storage.
The three-member Iowa Utilities Commission — the state panel that regulates utilities — approved Summit’s permit in Iowa last year. The permit covers the company's initial request to build about 690 miles of pipe. Summit is seeking further permits to expand the project by more than 350 miles in Iowa.
Summit had sought eminent domain to gain forced land easements from unwilling property owners for about a quarter of the route. Those easements allow the company to build and operate its pipeline system on land it doesn’t own.
Wolf Carbon Solutions had a proposed pipeline route that included Linn County and said it did not plan to use eminent domain. However, in December, the company withdrew its petition with Iowa regulators.
What the bill would do
Among the many provisions in the new Senate bill, Senate Study Bill 1166, it would:
- Exclude pipelines from the definition of public use or improvement for eminent domain purposes;
- Prohibit the state from allowing companies to use eminent domain unless 90 percent of affected landowners and 75 percent of the project’s area are first acquired through voluntary agreements;
- Require pipelines to be built 8 feet underground;
- Establish land restoration requirements;
- Require a pipeline company to satisfy a bond of $1 million or 1 percent of the project’s value;
- Make pipeline companies liable for damages resulting from project construction, operation or maintenance and clear landowners of any liability for damages to a project;
- And establish strict parameters around when a pipeline company can contact landowners on a project’s path.
“Those kinds of thresholds and that kind of communication restriction will probably guarantee you would never build another pipeline in the state,” Jeff Boeyink, a lobbyist for Summit Carbon Solutions, said during Tuesday’s hearing. “You certainly would never build another electric transmission line in the state. We all know those needs exist, and it’s going to forfeit all that investment. It’s not just our project … all of those.”
During the hearing, Iowa landowners spoke mostly in support of the bill, although some expressed preference for more narrow legislation, including another Senate Republican bill, Senate File 92, that would simply prohibit the use of eminent domain for pipeline projects. Leadership has not scheduled that bill for an initial hearing.
In addition to Summit’s lobbyist, representatives of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association also expressed their opposition to the bill.
The proposed legislation was approved by all three legislators on the subcommittee: Republicans Rowley and Tom Shipley of Nodaway, and Democrat Matt Blake of Urbandale. Although Blake and Rowley suggested they would like to see some amendments proposed to address some concerns raised about the bill. Shipley, who chaired the subcommittee, said the bill is not a final product, “by any stretch of the imagination.”
Having earned the subcommittee’s approval, Senate Study Bill 1166 is eligible for consideration by the full Senate Judiciary Committee just ahead of a deadline Thursday, by which all bills must be through a committee.
Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com
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