Republican Senators met for over six hours Friday to privately debate restrictions on the proposed Summit Carbon Solutions Pipeline, then emerged late Friday afternoon and adjourned for the week without taking any public action.
Pipeline opponents say it was a stunning development after being told a bill would come up for debate and a vote. Dennis King, a fourth generation farmer from Clay County, said the bill easily passed the House with 85 out of 100 possible votes. “The Senate leadership…really let us down here today,” he said. “I think there’s been a few senators sticking up for us, but there’s got to be a lot more.”
A dozen Republican senators have vowed to boycott votes on state spending plans until the senate votes to limit the pipeline company’s authority to seize land for the project.
Cindy Hanson and her sister are opposed to having the pipeline on their family’s Century Farm in Shelby County. “Since this started four years ago, we’ve lost 14 landowners who’ve passed away and they don’t know if their land is safe,” she said, before tearfully adding: “It’s not right.”
Monte Shaw, executive director the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, was at the capitol all day, too, lobbying against any move by legislators that would block the pipeline’s construction.
“Obviously I wish we would have had a vote and it would have gone the way we wanted,” Shaw said, “but I’m going to walk home going: ‘Hey, we lived to fight another day and that’s a win.'”
Having senators shelve the bill is also a win for the ethanol industry.
“We’ll sit down with somebody and talk about property rights and some improvements that we think could be made,” Shaw said. “…But we ultimately also want that to have a path forward for these projects because they’re so important to Iowa’s future.”
Shaw, along with some ethanol plant managers, farmers who back the pipeline and tradesmen were at the Capitol to lobby on the pipeline issue.
The Senate convened shortly after 9 a.m. on Friday and adjourned at about 4:30 p.m. The Senators spent about 56 minutes in public session Friday, quickly voting to confirm three people Governor Kim Reynolds has appointed to state boards and commissions. Senate Republicans also changed a House-passed bill to bar diversity, equity and inclusion programs in state and local government by removing a section of the bill that would have prohibited DEI programs at private colleges and universities in Iowa.