It's been awhile since Bluestem posted about ethanol CO2 pipeline projects proposed for this region.
I'll begin this brief digest with AgWeek reporter Jeff Beach's story in today's Alexandria Echo Press, Without eminent domain, Summit pipeline route in Minnesota looks different (see map above). Beach covers the first Minnesota Public Utilities Commission meetings on the Summit Carbon Solutions carbon capture pipeline on May 2 in Breckenridge and May 3 in Fergus Falls:
Unlike other states along the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline route, Minnesota does not allow the use of eminent domain to help secure right-of-way for the carbon capture project.
One effect of that is a more jagged route, making 90 degree turns and following section lines rather than angling across fields.
“So we work with all of the landowners, we have since day one,” said John Satterfield, director of regulatory affairs for Summit. “We've made really, really nice offers in our opinion, for right of way agreements across people's property to site our pipe in Minnesota.
“We've worked with these landowners here without this eminent domain thing that keeps on being brought up. It's a very emotional topic and discussion,” Satterfield said.
“Some things that are a result of that though is that we have lots of 90 degree angles. … So there's actually more pipe going to be laid than what would be necessary if we were to go in a straight line, and so, more digging.” . . .
The project has met some resistance from landowners who are concerned about safety, damage to farmland and the impact on property values. Some environmental groups also question whether the impact of the project outweighs the potential environmental benefits.
Without eminent domain, where a court can force a landowner to provide a property easement for a project with a public benefit, landowners can tell Summit, “no,” and force the company to look for another route.
That’s what Sharon Leinen did when Summit contacted her family about her farm property about 3 miles south of Breckenridge.
“They told me about the pipeline going in and they wanted to do some surveying on the land,” Leinen said in an interview before Tuesday’s meeting. “And I wasn't for it right from the beginning.”
She declined their easement offer, where Summit offers to compensate landowners for the right to cross a piece of land.
“So I guess they know that I'm not going to sign an easement, so they're going to a neighboring piece of land,” Leinen said.
The pipeline will run up to the edge of her property, but then have to cross a road to a neighbor’s field to the south.
That doesn’t mean Leinen’s worries are over, however. She is still concerned about a possible rupture of the hazardous liquid pipeline that’s less than a mile away. She has a daughter who is considering moving back to the farmstead who shares her concerns.
“I've seen videos of one of these things when they rupture, and it affects a four mile radius area. So I would be in that area, so I'm very concerned,” Leinen said.
In a public meeting in Fergus Falls on May 3 in the afternoon, Peg Furshong, who lives near a different section of the pipeline route in Renville County, advocated for a study of what a rupture of a pipeline crossing beneath a waterway would look like.
"Modeling for dispersion in moving waterways is really important because when CO2 mixes with water, it creates carbonic acid and it's highly corrosive and it kills everything in its path," she said. "And so I think it's really important that we make sure that we have a studies commission for that, because Minnesota's natural heritage is our water."
Summit has touted the safety record of pipelines; however there was a liquid carbon dioxide pipeline rupture in Mississippi in 2020 that sent more than 40 people to the hospital.
Liquid carbon dioxide pipelines have to be built to federal standards. However the agency that sets those standards, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, is in the process of updating the regulations. . . .
Read the rest at the Echo Press. Beach concludes:
Other meetings are planned . . . online this week:
May 4: 6-9 p.m. online at https://bit.ly/CO2PipelineMtg . Those interested also can call-in to the meeting at 1-408-418-9388. The password is Commerce1.
A public comment period is open until May 18.
There will be more chances for public comment both before and after the environmental impact statement is finalized, which could happen before the end of the year, according to the PUC's presentation .
A final PUC decision on the Otter Tail to Wilkin CO2 pipeline permit may occur in March or April 2024, but that also is tentative.
The law being what it is Minnesota, South Dakota is another story. At the Mitchell Republic, Jason Harward reported Wednesday in Summit Carbon files more than 80 eminent domain lawsuits against South Dakota landowners:
Mike Klipfel knew this day would come soon enough.
On April 24 and 25, the Leola resident was named in three separate eminent domain lawsuits brought by Summit Carbon Solutions, the company behind a carbon sequestration pipeline that will chart a course across three different parcels of his land and 300 feet from his family home.
“If they can do it to us, they can do it to you,” Klipfel, who can trace his roots back nearly 140 years in McPherson County, told Forum News Service in a May 2 interview. “And they will if you have something they want.”
Klipfel is one of at least 80 landowners in 10 South Dakota counties, most of them in the northern half of the pipeline’s route through the eastern part of the state, facing eminent domain lawsuits filed by Summit Carbon over the past week.
Since the company has been “unable to acquire the necessary easements by agreement,” it’s seeking to “exercise its right of eminent domain,” the lawsuit against Klipfel reads.
Jesse Harris, the director of public affairs for Summit Carbon, framed these lawsuits as a “next step” in a process that has involved, among other things, “negotiating in good faith and partnering with thousands of landowners.”
“We look forward to continuing to work with regulators, policymakers, landowners and more to advance this critical investment in our economy,” Harris continued in a written statement to Forum News Service.
For most South Dakotans on the proposed pipeline route, contact with Summit Carbon began nearly two years ago. According to some of these landowners, the interactions with representatives of the company over that period of time have been frustrating.
“We can’t get any facts to even make these decisions, nothing is out in the open,” Jared Bossly, a Brown County landowner who is also the subject of condemnation proceedings, told Forum News Service. “It’s a one-way street. They want to get it rammed through as quickly as they can.”
Others recount “intimidating” groups of surveyors, as many as 20 vehicles strong, accessing property slated for the pipeline without permission.
“We don’t have any protections for that in this state,” Klipfel said. . .
Read the entire article at the Republic.
Beach began by mentioning other state's laws regarding eminent domain. However, surveying property for pipelines in Iowa might not be an easy thing, a judge recently ruled. At the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Jared Strong reported Wednesday in Judge: Iowa’s pipeline land survey law is unconstitutional:
State law that allows hazardous liquid pipeline companies access to private land for surveys is unconstitutional because it doesn’t provide compensation for intangible damages suffered by landowners, a district court judge has ruled.
“The damages resulting from a landowner’s loss of his right to exclusive use of his property are subjective in the same way that pain and suffering damages are as it relates to a victim of a tortious injury,” wrote Judge John Sandy, in his Wednesday ruling.
Because Iowa law does not compensate landowners for the duress they incur when they are forced to allow land surveyors on their properties without consent, it violates their constitutionally protected right to exclude people from their properties, Sandy said.
The ruling is the result of a lawsuit Navigator CO2 Ventures filed against landowner Martin Koenig in Clay County that sought a court-ordered injunction to conduct survey work on his land.
Those surveys will help determine the path and depth of Navigator’s proposed carbon dioxide pipeline, which would span more than 800 miles in Iowa. The pipeline would transport captured carbon dioxide from ethanol plants and other facilities for underground sequestration in Illinois or for other commercial purposes.
The lawsuit is one of four that have been filed by Navigator against landowners who have prevented the company from conducting the surveys. Another carbon dioxide pipeline company, Summit Carbon Solutions, has filed similar suits against several landowners.
Those landowners — represented by the same attorneys as Koenig — have all argued that the survey law is unconstitutional. Wednesday’s court ruling was the first to decide those arguments.
“Our client is thrilled,” attorney Brian Jorde said Wednesday of Koenig.
Iowa law allows the companies to conduct the surveys after holding informational meetings about their projects when they provide 10-day notifications of the surveys by certified mail to the affected landowners.
“The entry for land surveys … shall not be deemed a trespass and may be aided by (court) injunction,” the law says.
The law says companies must compensate landowners for actual damage they cause during the survey work, which satisfies a constitutional requirement that land cannot be taken for certain purposes without appropriate compensation, Navigator has argued.
“We believe the ruling is a deviation from existing precedent,” the company said Wednesday. “Similar survey statutes have been recently reviewed and deemed constitutional by courts in surrounding states.”
Navigator said it will appeal the Wednesday decision.
A Boone County landowner unsuccessfully challenged the Iowa law in 2015 amid land surveys for the Dakota Access oil pipeline.
In that case, another district court judge said: “The activity is not a permanent physical invasion or occupation of (the owner)’s property.”
Jorde has argued the law is deficient in properly compensating landowners because the companies decide the amount of compensation that is necessary for property damage.
In his Wednesday ruling, Sandy went further and said the mere forced entry onto private land deserves compensation, regardless of physical damage.
His rationale relies on a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court ruling about a California regulation that gave labor unions access to agricultural properties to solicit employees. The court decided in a 6-3 opinion that granting such access to the labor organizations amounts to a temporary taking of land.
Sandy noted that past decisions about Iowa survey law happened before that ruling.
He wrote that the law “results in a per se government taking without providing just compensation, in violation of … the Iowa Constitution and the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The court can find no other reasonable interpretation in which (the law) passes ‘constitutional muster.’”
Sandy also denied Navigator’s request for an injunction.
In a parallel case in Woodbury County involving Navigator and another set of landowners, a judge is poised to rule on the constitutionality of the law. It’s unclear whether Wednesday’s decision will have any effect on that case.
A final note
While it's not about the ethanol CO2 pipelines, but biofuels themselves, Art Cullen's latest column, Buying time for biofuels, is worth our readers' time. Who can resist this from Storm Lake:
. . .You can’t just pull the plug on ethanol and corn markets. It would be an economic disaster. But neither should we delude ourselves into thinking that we can pin our prosperity around corn ethanol burned by the ground transportation fleet. Our biofuel infrastructure needs help on transitioning to its next phase, not spending all our political capital defending the old structure.
There are ethanol plants in Kansas depending on those tax credits when they scarcely have enough water to grow corn, much less distill it.
If we didn’t grow corn where it doesn’t belong we would not need an ethanol market to suck up the excess. Nature is taking care of that, along with our help. The more soil we ship down the river, and the more we raise the temperature by burning fuel, the fewer bushels we will yield. . . .
Always a treat to read Cullen's words.
Related posts
- CURE files appeal with MN PUC on Summit Carbon pipeline environmental review
- News digest: South Dakota and Minnesota PUCs deal with Summit carbon pipeline issues
- In Iowa, ethanol carbon pipeline opponents want pause until new safety regulations are ready
- Summit Carbon Solutions files permit for risky CO2 pipeline in Otter Tail and Wilkin Counties
- Will ethanol carbon capture pipelines fracture brittle unity of South Dakota Republicans?
- South Dakotans & others get fantods over Summit Carbon Solutions' sketchy 10% owner
- Matt Birk loves the ethanol carbon dioxide pipeline proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions
- Ethanol carbon pipeline news digest: from the Guardian to the Aberdeen American News
- Navigator CO2, POET sign letter of intent for carbon capture, utilization, and storage service
- Carbon capture pipeline blues: SD landowners call for dismissal of pipeline permit application
- Iowa Capital Dispatch: Group seeks end of ethanol carbon pipeline ‘harassment’
- Ethanol carbon capture pipeline digest: farmers, students, greenwashing, safety, law enforcement
- Storm Lake Time Pilot's Art Cullen: Ripping up CRP is a terrible signal for the planet
- Minnesota Public Utility Commission claims regulatory authority for carbon pipelines
- CO2 pipelines could affect the land, lives and livelihoods of South Dakota property owners
- SD News Watch: Proposed CO2 pipelines thrust SD into billion-dollar climate change debate
- About that permanent carbon storage by the Summit ethanol pipeline & Project Tundra
- Ethanol carbon capture pipeline news digest: political power and big money edition
- Ethanol carbon pipeline digest: trust & protest
- South Dakotans, Iowans don't hug CO2 pipeline
- Keloland: mostly negative public comments to SD Public Utilities Commission on CO2 pipeline
- Strib: Ethanol's per-gallon carbon output shrinks, but greenhouse gas from plants remains high
- We agree: It's time to move on from ethanol
- Another IA newspaper editorial board questions ethanol industry, carbon capture pipelines
- Ethanol CCS pipeline update: Reuters & Agweek
- Not a lot of easements for Midwest carbon pipeline, but plenty of political connections
- 2 ethanol CO2 headlines that make us go hmmm
- CO2 pipelines: who wins & who loses?
- Coming soon from a cornfield near you: mammoth carbon capture pipeline system
- Mother Jones: USDA Secretary Vilsack’s son works for a controversial ethanol pipeline project
- Iowa county boards scorn construction of CO2 pipelines, use of eminent domain to build them
- Digest of news about carbon dioxide pipeline
Map: The proposed route of the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline through Otter Tail and Wilkin counties in Minnesota. The liquid carbon dioxide would flow west into North Dakota.
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