Neighbors will continue to oppose carbon pipeline project

Members of the Linn County Board of Supervisors are charged with overseeing “matters related to the health and welfare of Linn County and its residents.” That does not include issuing ordinances that give permission for residents to be asphyxiated.

But in reading Planning and Zoning’s new ordinance for the board on the regulation of CO2 pipelines, who could tell? So yet again, dozens of neighbors filed into Linn County’s Jean Oxley Building to speak out — this time, protesting an ordinance that, through its technical distinction between supercritical CO2 and liquid CO2, would have carbon pipelines built within 50 feet of local schools, businesses, churches, farms, and homes. Peer-reviewed, scientific research has demonstrated that an eight-and-a-half-inch CO2 pipeline rupture resulted in a deadly plume of CO2 that traveled over 1,312 feet. And Wolf has proposed a pipeline over twice that diameter. Scott County, for example, has affirmed a setback of 1,600 feet. But Linn County’s 50-foot setback would be within the “danger zone” for anyone who lived, worked, or went to school there.

Interestingly, the members of the Board of Supervisors already understand this. Multiple times, landowners have spoken up at meetings in front of the Board, and pertinent information (links to peer-reviewed articles and scientific experiments) was sent to the board through staff at Planning and Zoning back in January 2023.

Yet, this is not just a story about the Board of Supervisors’ lack of moral fiber. It is about something that runs more deeply than the politics of the moment.

For our part, landowners opposed to these projects have been, up until now, quintessentially “Iowa Nice.” We’ve told Wolf, politely and respectfully, that we did not want their hazardous CO2 pipeline in our communities. We’ve written letters, printed T-shirts and signs, held local meetings and entered humorous floats in local parades. And, together, over 250 families in the corridor posted on the Iowa Utilities Board docket to let it be known, simply but firmly, that we will not sign easements with Wolf.

We gave Wolf the opportunity to step away, with dignity. We treated Wolf with respect, because “Iowa Nice” has always been about respecting the lives of others — it is a version of the Golden Rule. Some of our neighbors, who have told Wolf again and again that they will not sign an easement, nevertheless still listened politely to Wolf’s land agents when they came to the door. Why? Because they were concerned about the agents making enough money to feed their families. They wanted the land agents to be able to document for the company that they had at least talked to landowners (even if the answer was still, “No”), so that the land agents would get paid. That’s “Iowa Nice.” We saw the humanity of Wolf’s employees; we gave them dignity; we treated them as we wished to be treated.

But now it is clear that, in Wolf’s moral universe, there is no room for the Golden Rule. While they publicly swore not to use the threat of eminent domain to take away private property (a vow that they broke when they recently filed with the Illinois Commerce Commission), they were quietly working behind the scenes to ensure that they could wield a greater threat — a threat to our very lives.

“Sign this easement,” we seem to hear them saying now. “Forget your neighbors. Forget your faith. Take this money and run for your life, or we’ll put this thing 50 feet from your house.”

This is why we consider our lives, our families, and our communities under threat. But we won’t succumb to the bullying, even if our elected officials have. Wolf has made no progress on securing voluntary easements because we are all standing together. The next time Wolf’s land agents come up to our homes and start banging on the windows — the next time they harass us with four or five phone calls in a row — or the next time a land agent parks at the bottom of our driveway, making us prisoners of our own homes (examples of which have happened to my neighbors) — you will not find us concerned about the land agent’s ability to earn a salary. You will find all of us — all of us — showing up to support our neighbor, as we showed up together at the Jean Oxley Building on July 17.

We know what is at stake. Because underneath “Iowa Nice” is a strength — a moral rule — so profound that it cannot be shaken, and the issue of the CO2 pipelines has touched us all the way down to the source of that strength.

Jessica Wiskus lives in rural Lisbon.