An Omaha, Nebraska, company that wants to build an 810-mile carbon capture pipeline across Iowa filed a petition with state regulators this week asking for a permit and permission to use eminent domain to force unwilling landowners to sell the company easement rights for their land.
Navigator Heartland Greenway is the second of three pipeline companies to seek a permit. Summit Carbon Solution began the process to get a pipeline permit in late January.
Navigator’s petition, filed with the Iowa Utilities Board, calls for a $3.2 billion underground hazardous liquid pipeline across 33 counties in Iowa, including Story and Polk, to capture carbon dioxide emissions from ethanol and other industrial agriculture plants in Iowa.
A subsidiary of Navigator CO2 Ventures, the company proposes to liquefy the carbon dioxide under pressure and transport it via the pipeline to be sequestered a mile underground in Illinois.
Altogether, Navigator’s pipeline would stretch 1,300 miles across Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota. South Dakota-based Poet, the largest global ethanol producer, and the Iowa Fertilizer Co., based in Wever in southeast Iowa, have signed onto the project, whose customers would include 21 ethanol and fertilizer plants in Iowa.
No hearings have been set for the Navigator and Summit permit requests. Wolf Carbon Solutions is the other company proposing a pipeline.
Concerns from Iowa officials, landowners
Iowa farmers, landowners and state and county officials have opposed the three projects, concerned about the possible use of eminent domain powers. They’ve also expressed concern about the safety of the pipelines carrying carbon dioxide, an asphyxiant, and whether the companies would fully restore any damage pipeline construction causes to farmland and underlying drainage systems.
Navigator didn’t immediately file a list of the properties where it anticipates needing to use eminent domain. Navigator said it’s still working on access with farmers, many of whom have been busy harvesting this year’s crops.
Summit also didn’t immediately file a list, but subsequently did.
More:Builders vow CO2 pipelines will be safe. Worried Iowans point to a Mississippi rupture.
Navigator says jobs, environmental benefits to come from pipeline
All the companies have said they are working with landowners to get voluntary easements for the projects and assure Iowans that the projects are safe, saying they will exceed federal pipeline construction and safety requirements.
Navigator said in its permit request that its proposed pipeline will provide economic and environmental benefits to Iowa, the nation’s largest producer of ethanol and the corn it is largely made from. It said the project will create 5,500 construction jobs in Iowa, and about 9,200 across the entire project. It also said the pipeline will allow sequestration of 4.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in Iowa, enough to cut ethanol’s carbon footprint by as much as half ― the equivalent of removing 900,000 cars from the road.
About half of Iowa’s annual corn crop is used to make the renewable fuel. But the ethanol industry faces a rocky future, given President Joe Biden’s push toward electric vehicles to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change. The Biden administration says carbon sequestration projects likely will be needed to reach net-zero emissions across the U.S. economy by 2050.
Opponent calls carbon capture pipelines ‘scams’
Some opponents have called the pipelines boondoggles, saying they will fail to provide the promised environmental benefits while receiving huge federal subsidies. Food & Water Watch, a Washington, D.C., environmental group, estimates the three Iowa projects could snag about $40 billion in tax incentives over 12 years.
“Hazardous carbon pipelines like Navigator’s are dangerous scams that stand to make a few out-of-staters wealthy at the expense of a whole lot of Iowans,” Emma Schmit, a Food & Water Watch senior organizer in Iowa, said in a statement. “But as billions of our tax dollars fund these unproven, unwanted projects, Iowa’s legislative leaders have proven unwilling to stand up to private donors and stand up for their constituents. We cannot allow carbon capture and its hundreds of miles of destructive, dangerous pipeline to take root in Iowa.”
Wally Taylor, an attorney for the Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter, said he’s concerned about a Navigator request to waive some farmland soil restoration requirements.
Taylor also said he’s frustrated the Iowa Utilities Board isn’t forcing the companies to file their eminent domain list with their permit requests.
“My sense if that the board wants to give the pipeline companies all the time and all the weapons needed to extract ‘voluntary’ easements,'” Taylor said in an email.
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Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com or 515-284-8457.
