Iowa Lawmaker Says The State Needs To Do More To Protect Landowners
The carbon pipeline that is planned to go through Iowa has people in its path worried about having their land seized due to eminent domain.
A report from Radio Iowa says one northwest Iowa lawmaker has chimed into the discussion saying that the legislature should act to protect private property owners for Iowans that do not want the pipeline to cut through their land. According to Representative Steven Hansen, developers would reap millions of dollars from the pipelines.
Without federal incentives, we wouldn't be talking about these pipelines, so there's going to be winners and there's going to be losers, but it should be our landowners.
Both Plymouth and Woodbury County Boards have come out saying they are against the state granting eminent domain to developers, allowing them to gain access to land from property owners who haven’t agreed to the pipeline.
For all the talk about different rights, I don't know what is probably more important than the right to do what you want to with your land," Hansen says. "And I think that's a bipartisan agreement.
Hansen says legislators should not defer to the Iowa Utilities Board for the decision to grand eminent domain for the pipeline.
Representative Bobby Kaufmann’s plan to require at least 70-75 percent of landowners to sign the pipeline easements before eminent domain could be granted has been tabled. According to Kaufmann, other utility projects have been successful in offering landowners enough money so that eminent domain hasn’t been needed.
The purposed pipeline would run through five states from North Dakota to Illinois, would be the largest carbon capture project in the world. Its goal is to send 12 million tons of CO2 to be stored underground in western North Dakota.