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Iowa Senate may debate a pipeline-related bill
The Senate committee has overhauled a wide-ranging bill that key House members said would “clean up the mess” the Iowa Utilities Commission created by granting a pipeline permit to Summit Carbon Solutions.
Republican Senator Mike Bousselot of Ankeny has proposed a 34-page alternative, and it got support from the other Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee.
“House legislation over the past few years has discriminated by project type, creating protected classes of landowners or it was simply intended to attack a particular project,” said Bousselot, who’s chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and has been a state legislator since September 2021.
The bill is now eligible for debate in the full Senate, which has never considered any pipeline-related bill since Summit’s project was first proposed in 2022. This year’s original House bill would have set a 25-year limit on the operation of a carbon pipeline. Bousselot gets rid of that limitation and, instead, sets some standards for any type of pipeline, transmission line project, or structures to generate power proposed since last year.
“I believe it is important that we pass legislation protecting all landowners, not just those impacted by a certain pipeline project by taking into account all potential future contingencies,” said Bousselot, who in 2017 was a managing director and head of external relations for Summit Agricultural Group, a company owned by Bruce Rastetter, who founded Summit Carbon Solutions in 2021.
Former Congressman Steve King of Kiron was at the Iowa Capitol yesterday, urging senators to stop Summit’s carbon capture project. “This is dangerous material. We don’t have regulations for it,” King said. “…People are at risk here.”
Kim Junker, a Butler County farmer, expressed her frustration during a Senate subcommittee hearing. “My husband and I are registered Republicans, and frankly, I’m sick and tired of the games the Republicans have been playing with our lives, our livelihoods, our business, our property, and our legacy,” she said. “You guys work for us, your constituents, not just your big donors.”
Under Bousselot’s proposal, the Iowa Utilities Commission would have to decide within a year if any future pipeline, transmission line, or power generation project qualifies for eminent domain.
