Iowa landowners call on lawmakers to restrict eminent domain for CO2 pipelines

DES MOINES — Reinvigorated efforts to restrict the taking of private land for building carbon dioxide pipelines were heard Tuesday at the Iowa Capitol as landowners and lawmakers called on the state Senate to take up the issue.

During a rally in the Iowa Capitol rotunda, landowners and pipeline opponents urged the Legislature to follow in the footsteps of South Dakota, where Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden recently signed a law banning the use of eminent domain in that state to gain easements for carbon dioxide pipelines.

Dennis King, a farmer from Clay County, said there is no accountability for the multistate CO2 pipeline proposed by the Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions.

“They started coming to our neighborhood about four years ago,” King said during the rally. “They came with a big fishing pole and a big hook on the end of that line and a whole lot of cash on that hook. Nothing good ever happens to the fish once they bite.”

While Iowa House Republicans in recent years have moved several bills related to CO2 pipelines, Senate Republican leaders who determine which bills the chamber considers have not advanced similar legislation.

Lawmakers in the Iowa House have introduced a slate of bills this session addressing pipelines and landowners’ rights, including House File 943, which would ban the use of eminent domain on agricultural land for carbon dioxide pipelines.

This session, a bill was proposed in the Iowa Senate that would place limitations on eminent domain and enact stronger regulations for pipeline and transmission line projects. While it was a new step for the Senate, Senate Study Bill 1166 did not meet the funnel deadline for bills to continue forward through the session.

Summit Carbon Solutions is aiming to build a $8.9 billion, 2,500-mile-long pipeline carrying liquefied carbon dioxide from ethanol plants through Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota to North Dakota, where it will be stored underground.

The pipeline, which won a permit last year in the state from the three-member Iowa Utilities Commission, would include 1,040 miles across 39 Iowa counties. The permit includes the company’s initial request to build around 690 miles of the pipeline in the state. Summit also is working on getting further permits for a 350-mile expansion.

The Iowa permit does not allowed construction to begin in the state until the Dakotas have granted permits also. North Dakota has, but South Dakota has not.

'Changing the rules in the middle of the game'

  Buy Photo

After Rhoden signed South Dakota’s ban on eminent domain, Summit filed a motion to suspend its permit application timeline in South Dakota, but still says it is committed to the project, adding that the state “changed the rules in the middle of the game.”

“This kind of regulatory uncertainty creates real challenges — not just for our project, but for the ethanol plants in South Dakota that now face a competitive disadvantage compared to their counterparts in neighboring states,” a Summit statement says.

But multiple farmers and landowners donning red shirts reading “No carbon pipeline” in the Iowa Capitol Rotunda said Tuesday that Summit changed the rules on them.

“They may want to tell us that, ‘well, you can't change the rules in the middle of the game,’” said Jess Mazour, a conservation program associate with the Sierra Club Iowa Chapter. “Every single person here in a red shirt had the rules changed on them, and that's not right.”

Sherri Webb, who farms in Shelby County, said she is concerned she’ll have to give up her family's land because she doesn’t want to burden her grandchildren with property that could be taken through eminent domain.

“This is the third and fourth generation of our family. One hundred twenty-five years in our family,” Webb said as she held up a family photo. “No till, had good Iowa practices as far as taking care of the land, fourth, fifth and sixth generations. You see the seventh generation? It's not there because our land, with eminent domain and the possibility of a leak or a rupture, no liability insurance, there probably will not be a seventh generation. I think that's pretty darn sad for Iowa.”

Multiple state representatives and senators joined the rally-goers in calling on the Legislature to take action, including Republican Sen. Jeff Taylor, of Sioux Center.

“We've seen what the grassroots will do in South Dakota,” Taylor said. “There's no good reason that the Iowa Legislature and the Iowa state government can't follow suit."

Senate Democrats pitch rule change

On Tuesday, Democrats in the Senate minority attempted to change the chamber’s rules to allow for floor debate and a vote on legislation related to pipelines, eminent domain or landowner rights — or any other topic.

While the Senate considered a batch of rules that govern the chamber’s legislative procedures, Democrats proposed an amendment that would allow for discharge petitions, in which a majority of legislators could require a bill to be brought up for debate and a vote. Discharge petitions are designed to give legislators a tool to force a vote on bills that legislative leaders have declined to advance.

A discharge petition has not been used in the Iowa Legislature since 2011 when former Republican Sen. Kent Sorenson from Indianola tried to force a vote on a resolution setting up a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

The Democrats’ proposal failed, with a majority of Republicans voting it down. Four Republicans — Sens. Kevin Alons of Salix, Doug Campbell of Mason City, Rocky De Witt of Lawton and Sandy Salmon of Janesville — joined Democrats in support.

“Iowans can’t even get a hearing in this chamber to debate it and that’s a shame,” said Sen. Tony Bisignano, a Democrat from Des Moines who brought the amendment.