Landowners who have refused to grant property easements for the proposed Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline say they’re outraged state regulators have given the project a green light and considering their legal options. The Iowa Utilities Board announced today that the project would get a construction permit if regulators in the Dakotas approve the pipeline route in their states.
Jess Mazour of the Sierra Club’s Iowa chapter has been working with a coalition of landowners for the past three years and she led an online news conference this afternoon. “The Iowa Utilities Board voted 3-0 against Iowans and impacted landowners in favor of a dangerous and unpopular project that violates private property rights and the fact that IUB related this decision when a large portion of Summit’s route is underwater is shameful and callous,” Mazour said. “Iowa landowners are currently losing their homes and now get word they may be losing their farms.”
Sherri Webb and her siblings inherited Shelby County land from their grandmother. During the Iowa Utilities Board hearings last fall, she testified against the use of eminent domain to seize her family’s land for the project. “I hope that the Iowa landowners now understand that absolutely none of their land is safe from being taken,” Webb said. “Will we give up? No. We will appeal and we will never give up.”
Brian Jorde, an Omaha attorney who has represented landowners in Iowa and the other states along Summit’s pipeline route, said the first step is a formal request that asks the Iowa Utilities Board to reconsider its decision, then a lawsuit could be filed in Iowa district court after that. “They were handpicked, the three members of the IUB, to do this job,” Jorde said. “…Obviously disappointing, but I invite people to be more disappointed in Iowa’s politicians than Summit.”
Jorde says Iowa politicians “rolled out the red carpet” for the pipeline developer. Governor Reynolds appointed two of the three members of the Iowa Utilities Board after it began reviewing Summit’s construction permit.
Wally Taylor, an attorney for the Sierra Club Iowa chapter, said Iowa’s utility regulators “ignored evidence” showing the project had no direct benefit to the public, but is designed to profit Summit and the ethanol plants it chooses to link to the pipeline. “It isn’t like a train or an airplane where any passenger that buys a ticket can get on,” Taylor says.
The Iowa Utilities Board decision stipulates that Summit must get approval from North Dakota for its pipeline route and underground storage location and from South Dakota regulators for the route in that state. The approval process in South Dakota could stretch into 2026.