Editor’s note — Wiskus is the Democratic candidate for Iowa Senate District 42. The ADM Wolf Pipeline also impacts a number of Mount Vernon, Lisbon and Cedar county farmers in our readership area.
Wolf Carbon Solutions has officially opened a docket with the Iowa Utilities Board, making theirs the third CO2 pipeline proposed for our state. This CO2 pipeline originates at the ADM facility in Cedar Rapids and, in Linn County, travels just north of Ely and south of both Mount Vernon and Lisbon. It dips slightly into Johnson County and then crosses over into Cedar County, passing north of Tipton and into Scott and Clinton Counties.
Several months have passed since Navigator CO2 Ventures held their public meeting in Linn County, and much more information about these projects has since surfaced. New questions include:
What about safety?
On May 26, our nation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration announced that it would “strengthen its safety oversight of carbon dioxide (CO2) pipelines around the country to protect communities from dangerous pipeline failures” as “a result of PHMSA’s investigation into a CO2 pipeline failure in Satartia, Mississippi in 2020.” But the “new rulemaking to update standards for CO2 pipelines” that PHMSA describes will take several years to develop and put into place. Why are CO2 pipelines being built in Iowa before the necessary safety studies have been completed?
What is the real purpose of transporting the liquid CO2?
In a PowerPoint presentation housed on the U.S. Department of Energy website and drawing on scientific studies as recent as 2020, ADM shows a map of a CO2 pipeline leading from the facility in Cedar Rapids, across Linn, Cedar, Scott and Clinton Counties, and through Illinois to an area south of Decatur. This area has oil derrick symbols on the map, with an explanation that the estimated recoverable oil in that region is 700 million barrels, requiring 150 million tons of liquid CO2 for “enhanced oil production,” a process that ultimately releases far more CO2 into the atmosphere than was captured and sequestered in the ground. How is this good for the environment?
Why build it, if it isn’t necessary for the ethanol industry?
A “Carbon Reduction Feasibility Study” produced for ADM in 2020 finds that capturing and sequestering the CO2 is the least effective of all the options they studied. Indeed, when the Iowa Senate considered a bill, SF2160, that would have stopped the use of eminent domain for private projects like the CO2 pipelines, neither ADM nor POET registered opposition to the bill—both companies had already made other plans to reduce their greenhouse gasses without forcing eminent domain upon the farmers who serve them by providing their grain.
How can the use of eminent domain be justified for a project that is unsafe, unwise, and unnecessary?