Groups seek to delay Iowa pipeline decision after expansion announcement

Iowa state regulators should pause their final deliberations over Summit Carbon Solutions’ pipeline permit so they can review how the company’s recently announced expansion plans will affect it, the influential Iowa Farm Bureau Federation says.

That expansion will more than double the number of ethanol plants connected to Summit’s carbon dioxide pipeline in Iowa and add about 340 miles of pipe — about a 50% increase.

The totality of the expansion was announced by the company early this month, while its initial permit request is in its final throes of a more-than-two-year process with the Iowa Utilities Board.

“Whether the announced expansion of the pipeline will be of minimal impact or major impact to the proposed project in this docket is unknown, and the board should require Summit to update the board on the record on the effect the recent expansion announcement will have,” wrote Chris Gruenhagen, a Farm Bureau attorney, in a request to reopen the record for Summit’s initial permit request.

The company wants to transport captured carbon dioxide from a total of at least 57 ethanol producers in five states to North Dakota for underground sequestration.

Gruenhagen said the increased volume of the greenhouse gas to be transported annually has the potential to change the diameter of the originally proposed pipeline system in certain places, increase operating pressures, and require more pump stations and valve sites. The changes might require Summit to renegotiate land easements with an unspecified number of landowners.

Summit argues the request to reopen the record “will only cause unnecessary delay in a proceeding which is nearly complete,” and that any alterations to the original proposal can be handled with amendment requests after a permit is issued.

Iowa is poised to be the first state to issue a permit for the project, which has had setbacks in the Dakotas. It is being reconsidered by North Dakota regulators, who are set to hold new public hearings next month. The company has not yet reapplied in South Dakota but plans to.

A more efficient route?

One landowner built upon the Farm Bureau request to suggest Summit needs to revamp its routes to make them more efficient, given the large number of new ethanol facilities and pipeline miles that are part of the expansion.

“Without such changes, the proposed pipeline inflicts unnecessary damage to property, including farmland, and unnecessarily exposes risk to more Iowans,” wrote Richard Brandau, who identified himself as a landowner in Floyd and Mitchell counties in a recent filing with the IUB.

Brandau plotted alternative routes in southwest and northern Iowa that he said have the potential to shave more than 70 miles of pipe from the project.

But his analysis includes straight-line routes between ethanol plants that can be infeasible because of various obstacles. One of his routes, for example, would travel through several miles of Mason City.

The company declined to comment on Brandau’s suggestions, but it has said its original route was planned to allow expansion to other facilities near its pipeline system.

Consolidate the permits?

Groups that oppose Summit’s pipeline system have also asked to pause the IUB’s pending decision on the company’s initial proposal and consolidate it with the permit requests that will be part of the expansion.

“This is not a situation where a pipeline is already constructed and years later a single lateral pipeline is proposed,” wrote Wally Taylor, an attorney for the Sierra Club of Iowa. “This is a situation where the original pipeline project has not even been permitted yet, and the 14 additional lines make this an entirely new and different project.”

Summit this month initiated 14 new permit proceedings with the IUB to facilitate the expansion. It successfully fought a similar consolidation request last year that targeted a single new permit for a 31-mile extension to an ethanol plant in St. Ansgar near the state’s northern border.

The Sierra Club has argued that failing to consider the project in its totality prevents landowners affected by expansions to participate adequately in the permit proceedings for the original proposal, which if approved might make the approvals of the expansions inevitable.

Summit argued that the consolidation request last year would unduly extend the permit process for its initial plan, and the IUB agreed.

“The board does not find that consolidation will expedite or simplify consideration of the issues involved,” it said in July. “The board finds the opposite to be true in this situation.”

It’s unclear when the IUB will decide the recent consolidation requests.

Meeting dates rejected

Summit asked the board this month to schedule 22 public informational meetings in the counties that are affected by the recent expansion announcement, which initiates the pipeline permit process.

The company is prevented by state rules from negotiating with landowners for easements or filing permit requests until after those meetings conclude.

Summit requested the meetings be held from April 22 to May 9. In a split decision, the three-member board rejected the proposed schedule and said the meetings should start in June or later.

The board did not provide a reason for that delay.

This article first appeared in the Iowa Capital Dispatch, a sister site of the Nebraska Examiner in the States Newsroom network.