Rural Iowans are starting to hear from pipeline companies that their properties stand along the routes for proposed carbon dioxide-carrying pipelines. If the landowners don’t voluntarily grant them access to drill on their lands, the companies could get permission to do so anyway through the “eminent domain” process.
Such designations, which are permitted for projects that have some public benefit, garnered attention, not much of it positive, after the Dakota Access Pipeline came through and left long-term damage to some land and crops.
Even those without land along the route have a stake in protecting the environment and beating back climate change. But these carbon-capture projects are billed as solutions to environmental problems some Iowans weren't even sure existed. Navigator CO2 Ventures, one of three companies that will seek approval from the Iowa Utilities Board, would take carbon dioxide emitted from ethanol and chemical fertilizer plants and transport it to a destination in Illinois to be dehydrated and buried deep underground. The other two companies are Summit Carbon Solutions and Archer Daniels Midland.
