No water for pipelines

During a period of increasing drought, the pipeline companies want to take a billion gallons a year of public water to use with carbon capture devices at ethanol plants. They say it's a win for the environment, but it's green washing. Turns out that pressurized CO2 is just the ticket to get that last bit of crude oil out of the ground! The DNR has already rubber-stamped water permit requests from the pipeline folks even though internal DNR emails reveal they don’t have a clue whether that type of water use is beneficial to the public or not.

CO2 capture has nothing to do with the cost of producing a gallon of ethanol, but Summit claims it will promote expansion of the Iowa ethanol industry. All of our best soils, and even much of our poor soils, are already intensively row-cropped for ethanol production. This just means more acres of marginal, highly sloped, possibly grassed or wooded fields, tilled up and row cropped at the expense of wildlife diversity, soil stability and water quality. Is that really in the public's interest?

Steve Veysey

Ames