Eminent domain ban advances from Senate subcommittee but changes are planned

An Iowa House bill banning the use of eminent domain for carbon sequestration pipelines advanced from a Senate subcommittee Tuesday, but senators intend to amend the bill with their own language.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Klimesh, R-Spillville, said he plans to amend the bill with language from his own property rights bill.

Klimesh held a hearing on House File 2104, a bill passed by the House in response to ongoing conflict in the state over property rights and a carbon sequestration pipeline.

“The Senate’s approach is to find a way that we can both honor property rights for those folks that want to say no and for those folks that want to say yes, while continuing to build linear infrastructure in the state,” Klimesh said, speaking to reporters after the subcommittee hearing.

Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines, sat on the subcommittee and said she was “surprised” Klimesh had called a subcommittee on the bill, considering his plans to run a different piece of legislation.

“That was the biggest bait and switch I’ve ever seen,” Petersen said at the close of the subcommittee after Klimesh shared his plans to amend the bill.

Klimesh introduced two bills the week prior related to the issue, one that would allow pipeline operators to widen the corridor in their route proposals and to find alternate easement parcels to avoid the use of eminent domain. The other bill would place a severance tax on sequestered carbon dioxide.

Klimesh’s bills have been supported by the corn and ethanol industries, who are in favor of the Summit Carbon Solutions proposed carbon sequestration pipeline project that would run through Iowa.

The opportunity to widen the corridor, they argued, would allow the project to move forward in the state, while a CO2 pipeline eminent domain ban would stop the project.

Landowners opposed to the Summit pipeline argue a ban, via HF 2104, is the only way to protect private property rights from a project they believe was wrongly given the power of eminent domain by the Iowa Utilities Commission.

“Nothing in this bill prevents or prohibits construction of a carbon capture pipeline,” Peg Rasmussen, a Montgomery County affected landowner, said in the subcommittee. “What is in this bill, is private property rights protection from the heavy hand of government.”

Several representatives from Iowa Laborers Local 177, spoke at the subcommittee against the eminent domain ban and said the project, which has been unable to start construction, would employ roughly 2,000 construction workers.

“This is the same bill that’s being introduced year after year after year,” Richie Schmidt, Local 177’s president said. “It doesn’t go anywhere. Workers are suffering.”

House lawmakers passed a similar bill last year, but it did not advance in the Senate. The Senate passed a different House bill restricting the use of eminent domain for carbon sequestration pipelines, but Gov. Kim Reynolds vetoed the legislation.

Cynthia Hansen, a Shelby County landowner, said the bill has “nothing to do” with stopping the creation of labor jobs.

“The pipeline can still be built, it just has to be built on voluntary easements, not on eminent domain,” Hansen said.

Fixing the ‘confrontation’ of the permitting process

Iowa Renewable Fuels Association and Iowa Corn Growers Association have been in favor of the pipeline project, as a carbon sequestration pipeline would enable Iowa ethanol plants to participate in the ultra-low carbon ethanol market, which the groups argue would also give a needed boost to the corn market.

Colin Gorton, on behalf of Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said the group was in favor of an effort to widen easement corridors, but was also interested in “improving Iowa’s permitting process on the front end.”

Gorton said the process now requires projects to “throw a dart at the wall” when proposing the route. He suggested amending Iowa’s permitting process to allow operators to talk to landowners before suggesting a route, in hope of devising a route with willing landowners.

“It’s really designed to create confrontation, and that’s not something that we support,” Gorton said of the current process.

A lobbyist from Summit echoed Gorton’s call for an amendment to the early stages of the process.

Sen. Mike Bousselot, R-Ankeny, who sat on the subcommittee and also chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, where the bill is headed, said he hopes to find a balance between protecting landowners and not impeding on “critical infrastructure and development.”

“Let me be abundantly clear, we have to do something this session to protect landowners and landowner rights,” Bousselot said. “We have to do that.”

Klimesh declined to answer Petersen’s comments at the onset of the committee on whether or not he intended to amend the bill. Petersen said she wanted to sign in support of the bill, but “not with an amendment that we didn’t discuss.”

Klimesh said HF 2104 will be in the full committee Wednesday with an amendment, and said there will be a subcommittee hearing on the bill he filed, Senate File 2067.

Klimesh said the comments he has heard on this issue and the eminent domain ban are of “the utmost importance” to him as he seeks to “find common ground.”

“We are all concerned about their property rights, everybody in the Senate is, everybody in both chambers is,” Klimesh said. “It’s time for us to find a solution, to find a solution that allows us to get ourselves, and dig ourselves, out of the box we currently put ourselves in by the overregulating of this corridor.”