The Carbon Pipeline – Top Concerns From Opponents

In this episode of The Iowa Podcast, guest host Mark Gannon speaks with Jessica Mazour of the Iowa Sierra Club who is leading an effort to end carbon pipelines in Iowa. For those unfamiliar with the issue, pipelines carrying carbon dioxide would run from ethanol plants in Iowa to North Dakota and then into the earth, supposedly below the water aquifers – an issue she says we should all be concerned about.

One organization behind much of the development is Summit Carbon Solutions headed by Bruce Rastetter of Alden, Iowa. The company has been offered incentives in the form of billions in tax credits. Mazour pointed out her five major reasons for not allowing these pipelines. 

They are:

1. The use of tax dollars to fund the project of a private company. The tax dollars are billions of dollars of tax credits.
2. The use of eminent domain to attain all the needed easements for the route. They argue the use of eminent domain should only be used for public good projects and not private company projects that do not benefit the public and may put them at risk and damage their land.
3. Damage to the land from all the construction that will take a long time to recover from. However, Iowa law only requires three years of damages to be paid.
4. Safety of the pipelines. They state there have already been cases of pipeline breaks in another project in Mississippi that people were severely injured and could have died without quick attention. Carbon gas is a deadly product that doesn’t mix with the air and stays low to the ground that will suffocate people and stall out combustible engines for police and first responders.
5. Safety of the groundwater once the poisonous gas is into the outer core of the earth since we don’t have good data and scientific evidence.

The opinions of guest hosts are their own, and may not represent the opinions of The Iowa Podcast or IowaPodcast.com.