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Lots of sunshine. High 79F. Winds light and variable..
Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph.
Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, vice-president of government and public affairs for Navigator Heartland Greenway LLC, addresses a crowd that nearly filled the 270 chairs set up at The Centre in Waverly on Tuesday evening. The Iowa Utilities Board required the meeting before the company could proceed with negotiating for easements.
A man identifying himself as “Kevin Dirks” asks about conservation payments in light of the easements Navigator is seeking for the proposed Heartland Greenway carbon dioxide capture pipeline project at a Tuesday informational meeting at The Centre in Waverly. The Iowa Utilities Board required the meeting before the company could proceed to negotiate with landowners for easements.
Jordan Jones, director of business development for Navigator Heartland Greenway, speaks at an informational meeting about the pipeline required by the Iowa Utilities Board on Tuesday at The Centre in Waverly.
Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, vice-president of government and public affairs for Navigator Heartland Greenway LLC, addresses a crowd that nearly filled the 270 chairs set up at The Centre in Waverly on Tuesday evening. The Iowa Utilities Board required the meeting before the company could proceed with negotiating for easements.
A man identifying himself as “Kevin Dirks” asks about conservation payments in light of the easements Navigator is seeking for the proposed Heartland Greenway carbon dioxide capture pipeline project at a Tuesday informational meeting at The Centre in Waverly. The Iowa Utilities Board required the meeting before the company could proceed to negotiate with landowners for easements.
Jordan Jones, director of business development for Navigator Heartland Greenway, speaks at an informational meeting about the pipeline required by the Iowa Utilities Board on Tuesday at The Centre in Waverly.
An informational meeting about a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline which will go through Bremer County drew a crowd to The Centre in Waverly on Tuesday.
In over three hours, the Iowa Utilities Board conducted the required informational meeting, a required process so negotiations for easements could begin. Attendees filled nearly 270 chairs.
Josh Byrnes, a utilities member, outlined the rights of landowners, and explained the responsibilities of the board starting at 6 p.m.
The company proposing the pipeline, Navigator Heartland Greenway LLC, outlined the project, which under the current proposed route will cover 810 miles through Iowa ending in a saline sandstone formation over a mile deep in the Illinois Basin near Decatur.
Over an hour later, the board opened the microphone for audience members, with an emphasis on landowners, with the caveat that spoken comments that night would not be filed with the utilities board.
Average time for the informational meetings has been over three hours, Byrnes said. Four hours after it started, the line to talk to a representative of the pipeline company was still a dozen people long.
The company, Navigator, could not begin right-of way easement negotiations with landowners until after Tuesday's informational meeting and cannot petition the Utilities Board for a permit until at least 30 days after the final informational meeting, according to a board packet.
Once the company petitions for a permit, Iowa law requires a public evidentiary hearing on the pipeline permit petition. After the petition is reviewed, notice will be published for two weeks in a newspaper in each affected county with the time, date and place of the evidentiary hearing.
“The hearing will be the opportunity for interested parties to present their evidence in favor of or opposing the project. IUB’s decision will be based on the record created at that hearing,” the packet states.
As the pipeline is more than 5 miles long, the hearing must occur in the county seat of the county at the midpoint of the proposed line, per Iowa Code 479B.6(2).
The midpoint is based on the trunk line and laterals of the pipe, Byrnes said.
Written comments or objections may be filed with IUB at any time but not later than five days prior to the hearing. An objection can be filed from efs.iowa.gov under the Navigator Heartland Greenway pipeline docket number, HLP-2021-0003.
“The IUB is not an advocate for any person, landowner or party,” the packet states.
The company will be requesting easements from landowners within the proposed route. Although an easement grants access to property for the company to locate its pipeline, it does not transfer ownership of the property.
Easements may be negotiated voluntarily, or they may be obtained through eminent domain. In negotiations, the company will need to know about future tiling or conservation structures planned on a property.
IUB will send notice to landowners if eminent domain is required, Byrnes said.
The property owner has the right to just compensation for the easement, per the Iowa Constitution Article I, section 18.
Iowa Code 6B determines just compensation for land taken by eminent domain.
After Tuesday’s meeting, the company can contact the landowners to enter their land for surveying purposes to determine direction or depth of pipelines.
“If permission is not obtained voluntarily, the company must give the landowner 10 days’ written notice by restricted certified mail and provide a date range for when surveying activity is to occur on the property. After expiration of the 10-day notice, the company may enter the land,” per IUB documents.
If the pipe is abandoned, is not operated for five consecutive years, or if construction ceases for that long, the right-of-way may revert to the current landowner.
Navigator Vice-President of Government and Public Affairs Elizabeth Burns-Thompson discussed the proposed project next.
Think of the CO2 transit system as a bus system that will take the liquefied compound from points A to B with Navigator as the bus company, she said.
CO2 has a potential to be a co-product like anything else an ethanol plant produces, she said. Potential uses include beverage carbonation, bio-plastics, even meat processing.
Economic incentives for the pipeline include the 45Q tax credit, the potential to market ethanol as a low carbon fuel in states that rank fuel by carbon intensity, and the ability to offset emissions.
A federal tax credit in Internal Revenue Code 45Q allots $50 per metric ton of captured and stored carbon for facilities beginning construction before Jan. 1, 2026, per the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
For the CO2 that cannot be sold as a co-product, Navigator intends to build injection wells and pump the remainder into a saline sandstone reservoir a mile below the Illinois Basin near Decatur. A cap rock right above the sandstone will allow this formation to keep the CO2 in place until it binds with the sandstone over time.
A CO2 sequestration model project is the topic of a museum near Decatur, Burns-Thompson responded to a question.
Compensation fits into three general “buckets,” which a land agent will negotiate with owners.
The first type of compensation, easements, will be up to a 75-foot construction easement additional to a 50-foot ongoing non-exclusive easement. Landowners will still be able to tile on the easement but cannot put a house on it or deep rooted trees with a canopy that will impede flyover safety checks.
The second is crop loss. The company will pay 250% of anticipated loss prior to construction, using county average or personal yield records for negotiation with the land agent.
The third is damages to existing infrastructure, such as tile, fences and so on.
Earlier this month, the Bremer County Board of Supervisors filed an objection to the project with the utilities board citing concerns of just cause for eminent domain and safety among others.
At the meeting, landowner concerns ranged from how the pipeline easement would affect government payment programs like CRP, which pays farmers to keep land in conservation use to what its public benefit would be, to how the company would be able to pay out damage claims.
Referring to conservation land, Navigator’s Monica Howard responded that often the company can buy out the strip of land in conservation use, pay the penalties, and pay the landowner for the loss. There is a permitting process for crossing conservation lands, she said.
Charley Thompson, an attorney, asked the company about its preparation for the involved risk. Thompson is a candidate for Iowa House District 58, which includes part of Todd Prichard’s former district and northeast Bremer County.
Howard responded that a high concentration of CO2 over time can cause asphyxiation.
With the pipeline going north of Waverly at a higher elevation than Waverly, and with CO2 heavier than air, “isn’t it possible someone in Waverly could be asphyxiated by smothering?” Thompson asked.
He asked about bond amount.
Byrnes said earlier the floor of the surety bond Navigator has is $250,000.
“We ensure that we are insured for the max,” Howard said, adding she did not have the specific number.
Thompson said Iowa Code requires the company post sufficient assets in case of claims.
“I don’t think it’s possible for them to meet permit conditions in Iowa Code,” Thompson told Waverly Newspapers afterward.
“Will you enforce eminent domain?” a member of the audience asked.
“It is unlikely we will be able to do all 810 miles without eminent domain,” Burns-Thompson said, referring to the current proposed route length in Iowa.
When another audience member asked about eminent domain procedure, IUB's Byrnes replied, “The burden is on the company to prove why there is a public use, a public good, a public purpose.”
Kim Junker, of New Hartford expressed concern about how an engine, including first-responder vehicles, would run under a potential high concentration of carbon dioxide.
“You’ve got vehicles that don’t run because the oxygen is stripped away from them,” Junker said.
Navigator’s Chris Brown pointed to the “supervisory control data acquisition program” notification system as a safety measure.
“Like an Amber Alert, you’d have that advanced notice,” Brown said.
Potential proximity of the pipeline to property was another concern Junker voiced.
The minimum setback when design started was 400 feet from a residence, Brown said, noting in areas set back 400-700 feet, “we’d have the heavier wall pipe we talked about.”
A few commenters took issue with this minimum pipe distance.
A man who said he turns wrenches for a living said engineering studies were often wrong. He said he would prefer experiential “raw data” and asked if he could find plume modeling on the website.
“Our plume models will be shared with our regulator,” Brown said. “We will not be sharing that with everybody in the public, no.”
The next issue was what happens when structures and the pipeline approach each other.
Navigator will assess the pipe, Howard said, which could result in a thicker pipe-wall design, for instance.
A woman who stated her name as Jana Fordyce said she is likely to be one of the properties with a 400 foot setback.
She said the Amber Alert style system the company is proposing would not reach her if she did not have her phone on her at all times. Her children camp in the yard, she said.
“What price do I put on my children’s head?” she asked.
In response to a question what would happen if a pipeline were severed, Brown said, “There are spaced-out repeaters. Instantly we would know we’ve lost fiber in a 2,000-foot section.” Notification would be sent back to the human control room in Omaha and a redundant control room to be determined. “Odds are the backup would be in Iowa.”
“We will have a physical presence along the line just not that control room,” Howard said.
Audience member Dale Janssen noted a judge ordered another carbon pipeline company to release the names of landowners who could face eminent domain. He asked if Navigator would do this preemptively, before being ordered.
Howard said Navigator does not file these publicly in other states. “We will absolutely do what is deemed appropriate, but we are waiting for those orders,” she said.
“If this fails to meet emissions, what is the plan?” Jean Kampman asked.
The answer was decommissioning and abandonment, Howard said, noting this would involve capping the line segment and deeding the easement back to the landowner. Howard said the ground would likely be restored well in advance of decommissioning the project were this to happen.
For Iowa economic impact of the project, 5,000 construction jobs and 50 permanent jobs were estimated in Navigator’s presentation, Burns-Thompson said.
For project-based jobs, Howard told Kampman, that Navigator would hire union workers giving preference to local union halls, then other halls in the U.S.
Navigator officials said the project is funded by private equity firm Black Rock.
A man commenting said, “This is a project that only has value because the government has fabricated that value. Private investment is going to benefit off the backs of us… hardworking landowners.”
Commenter Ted Junker encouraged people to express their opinion to the IUB in writing, so it will be considered, echoing utilities board officials. He said the project doesn’t have to go through land where owners don’t want it.
“They don’t need to use eminent domain,” Junker said.
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Lots of sunshine. High 79F. Winds light and variable.
Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph.
Cloudy in the morning with isolated thunderstorms developing later in the day. High around 85F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 40%.