Carbon Pipelines Present More Questions Than Answers for North Iowa Legislators
Carbon capture pipeline projects targeting Floyd, Chickasaw, Cerro Gordo, Butler and other north Iowa counties are creating more questions than answers for area legislators.
Summit Carbon Solutions and Heartland Navigator both want to go through Floyd County with their pipelines. A third company also wants to build a carbon pipeline in Iowa. The Iowa House has been considering a proposal that would prohibit pipeline companies from seeking eminent domain rights before March 1, 2023. That in turn would delay the companies from taking some land from property owners who don’t voluntarily enter easement agreements to have the pipelines cross their land.
Several carbon pipeline concerns were expressed by constituents during a legislative breakfast in Charles City Monday co-hosted by District 26 State Senator Waylon Brown of Osage and District 52 State Representative Todd Prichard of Charles City, sponsored by Floyd County Farm Bureau and Butler County REC.
Brown says the pipeline companies have some work to do to put landowners minds’ at ease.
Prichard says the issues require more investigation especially when so many carbon pipelines projects have come forth in a short time.
Prichard says the carbon pipelines provide a good opportunity for ethanol plants like Valero Renewables west of Charles City and Homeland Energy Solutions between New Hampton and Lawler as well as north Iowa corn farmers, but their environmental impacts also need further study.
