Food and Water Watch members at the Iowa Capitol. (photo by John Aspray)
A coalition of environmentalists and land owners is seeking a meeting with Governor Kim Reynolds, hoping she’ll intervene and block the Iowa Utilities Board from granting eminent domain so carbon pipeline developers can acquire land from reluctant property owners.
Judy Sebern Beachy and her sister inherited a farm in Floyd County that’s been owned by her family for four generations. One of the three pipelines would either run through the farm or be next to it.
“I’m all for doing things to help the climate, but I don’t feel that a pipeline is the answer for Iowa at this time,” she said.
Emma Schmit, an Iowa based organizer for Food and Water Watch, said the pipelines are “a carbon con job,” being proposed to ensure the oil and gas industry lasts longer.
“They’re also demanding to use our land against our consent…all to increase their own private net worth,” Schmit said.
Schmit was among a small group that rallied at the statehouse this afternoon after a bill that would have prohibited the use of eminent domain for pipelines was tabled in a senate committee.
Bruce Rastetter owns Summit Carbon Solutions, one of the companies seeking landowner easements for a carbon pipeline and he issued a written statement. The project “will be transformational for the ethanol industry and, by extension, the agriculture industry,” he said and Rastetter indicated “hundreds of farmers” have already signed voluntary easements to have the pipeline run through their property.