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Iowa landowner rights activists’ joy tempered by changes to CO2 pipeline legislation
Senate takes long-awaited action, but bill dramatically altered
Apr. 2, 2025 7:22 pm, Updated: Apr. 3, 2025 7:50 am
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DES MOINES — Iowa landowners and property rights activists have waited four years for the Iowa Senate to advance legislation to limit carbon dioxide capture pipelines and the use of eminent domain to claim farmland for pipeline use.
That day finally came Wednesday, but for some of those activists, the achievement rang hollow.
Lawmakers in the Iowa Senate advanced pipeline and eminent domain legislation — previously approved by the Iowa House — keeping it alive just ahead of a key legislative deadline this week.
It was the most action the Senate has taken on pipeline and eminent domain legislation over the past four years, during which the Iowa House has advanced many such bills.
Both chambers are led by Republican majorities.
But as the Senate advanced the House bill through subcommittee and committee hearings Wednesday, Senate Republicans significantly altered the bill — to landowner activists’ dismay.
“I have to say I am thrilled that we’ve gotten the bill farther than we ever have,” Jess Mazour, an activist with the Sierra Club and a leader among landowners who have lobbied state lawmakers over recent years, said Wednesday at the Iowa Capitol. “In four years, we’ve never gotten any movement in the Senate.
“But I’m worried that what they’re trying to do is pull a fast one on us to get a bill that doesn’t really address the problem right now and then claim victory over property rights.”
The bill, as passed one week earlier by the Iowa House, had multiple provisions. The House bill, House File 639:
- Included requirements for hazardous liquid pipeline companies to carry a certain amount of insurance and restore damaged farmland.
- Defined what is a public good for the use of eminent domain.
- Require Iowa Utilities Commission members to attend hearings on the pipeline projects.
- Prohibit renewal of a CO2 pipeline project after 25 years.
- Placed constraints on when and how the pipeline companies can file lawsuits against landowners.
As that bill emerged Wednesday from the Senate Commerce Committee, few of its original provisions remained. Only the requirements for land restoration, state commissioners’ hearing attendance and pipeline company’s insurance remained — and the insurance provision was adjusted, too.
The new version was introduced — just before the first hearing — by Sen. Michael Bousselot, a Republican from Ankeny and a previous head of external relations for Summit Agricultural Group, which owns Summit Carbon Solutions. That company has proposed a 2,500-mile CO2 pipeline through five states, including Iowa, to capture the greenhouse gas from ethanol plants and bury it in North Dakota.
The utilities commission last year approved Summit’s pipeline permit request in Iowa. It said construction could not start in Iowa until Summit received approval from the Dakotas. While North Dakota has, South Dakota has not — and last month adopted a law outlawing the use of eminent domain for CO2 pipelines in that state.
Bousselot’s amendment added many provisions to the House bill. It now contains provisions that would:
- Allow pipeline companies to alter a project to go outside the original planned path in order to obtain a voluntary easement, rather than using eminent domain inside the original path.
- Expand protections for crop loss, soil degradation and drainage tile.
- Require the Iowa Utilities Commission to make a ruling on a proposed pipeline project within one year of eminent domain power being requested.
- Apply all of the bill’s provisions to any projects seeking eminent domain — in other words not just pipelines, but also transmission lines and power generation lines.
Bousselot said one goal of his legislation was to create landowner protections for all kinds of projects, not just pipelines.
“The amendment today would be a major step forward to provide substantial new protections for private property owners,” Bousselot said during a meeting of the Senate Commerce Committee that he chairs. “And these protections are critically important, because the debate today over a carbon pipeline is going to be a debate tomorrow over hydrogen pipelines, over potentially other types of pipelines.”
Mazour called the expansion of the bill to include all types of projects a “poison pill” because it would create more opposition from more companies and industries.
Mazour also said the main problem with the newly formed bill is it does not sufficiently address the core issue for landowners: the use of eminent domain for CO2 pipelines.
The amended bill “doesn’t address eminent domain, and that is the most important thing we’ve been asking for, is to ban eminent domain for carbon pipelines,” Mazour said. “Anything short of that may be helpful in some instances, may be harmful in others, but it doesn’t address the root cause, which is eminent domain. Even though (Bousselot) stood there in front of the room and said, ‘It’s time to address property rights,’ the amendment, as they described it, doesn’t address property rights.”
Multiple landowners who spoke during Wednesday’s subcommittee hearing urged Senate lawmakers to also pass House File 943, which also passed the House and prohibits the use of eminent domain for carbon dioxide capture pipelines. That bill has not been considered by the Senate.
Rep. Steve Holt, a Republican from Denison who shepherded the bill through the legislative process in the House this year and a prominent proponent of landowner rights bills in recent years, said Wednesday that he had not yet learned much about Bousselot’s amendment but that he was disappointed that it removed many of the House-passed provisions.
“I’m disappointed, but not surprised,” Holt said. “They’re (Senate Republicans) in a different place on landowner rights than we are.”
With its passage out of the Senate Commerce Committee, the bill survives a key legislative deadline at the end of this week and is now eligible for debate by the full Senate.
Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee said they hope there is robust debate on the bill — and property rights, eminent domain and pipelines — on the Senate floor.
“These people deserve the debate on eminent domain and property rights,” Tony Bisignano, a Des Moines Democrat, said during the committee meeting, referring to the landowner activists in attendance. “This (amended bill) is a consolation. You hope they bite on it and they buy it. And it may be a little better. But it’s avoiding the issue. And that issue needs to be debated by the elected body in this state, the Senate, to determine what we believe property rights are.”
Comments: (515) 355-1300, erin.murphy@thegazette.com
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