Are County Board of Supervisors in Iowa Representing Iowans or Summit Carbon Solutions?

And much more--an interview with three informed constituents...

Oct 12, 2024

Jan Norris from Montgomery County recently reached out to me with concerns that many County Supervisors in Iowa are not being responsive to their constituents on controversial carbon pipeline projects planned by Summit Carbon Solutions, among other matters.

We set up a ZOOM call, and Julie Glade from Wright County and Kathy Carter from Floyd County joined Jan and me to share their concerns. All three have been very active on pipeline issues, and know more about the issues than many elected officials and members of the media, as the pipelines impact them and their neighbors directly (more background can be found here).

In the interview, the three lay out the major issues where they believe the Supervisors are not being responsive to their concerns where they have the power to do so.

They also describe violations of open meeting laws, a lack of transparency by the Iowa Utilities Commission, and how they believe Governor Kim Reynolds’ government reorganization has taken away the independence of the Office of Consumer Advocate. County Planning and Zoning Commissions are also largely unresponsive. They say part of the problem is that Supervisors and members of Planning and Zoning Commissions have a difficult time digesting the complex information, and tend to trust Summit.

Here is the video. An AI-assisted transcript follows.

LEONARD: Welcome everybody. Today, we're going to talk about pipelines, carbon pipelines. Joining me are Jan Norris from Montgomery County, Julie Glade from Wright County, Kathy Carter from Floyd County. A lot of people have been following the news, and controversies about the carbon pipelines. Jan, Can you give us a little overview?

NORRIS: Sure, in 2021 Summit Carbon Solutions announced that they wanted to build a 700-mile pipeline to transport CO2 across Iowa and it would affect five different states.

We are the state with a lot of mileage because we have the most ethanol plants for them to capture the CO2 from. And since that time they have ran into some issues with delays, the state of Iowa, the state of South Dakota, the state of Nebraska, the state of North Dakota, Minnesota. They are behind schedule. They were hoping to be operational by 2024, but they haven't even broke ground yet. In fact, Iowa is the only state that they had any kind of permit in.

So over 800 parcels of this phase one 2021 project are on the eminent domain list, which means people have not signed voluntary easements and they are eligible to go to eminent domain proceedings.

Now, before they even have permits for the first phase, Summit wants to expand with SCS transport pipeline and add an additional 350 miles in Iowa through another 14 laterals.

So what we are finding is that landowners across Iowa are experiencing county governments who are generally unresponsive to our concerns about the proposed carbon pipeline projects.

We have been petitioning our local governments to try and do things that they can do. There is a lot of it out of their control, but there is a few things they can do and what we're asking them to do is discuss those things and vote on them so that we have the options of having setback ordinances, survey ordinances, road crossing permit policies, and objections to eminent domain.

So what we have had a lot of issues with is that they seem to disregard the information coming from landowners who may be very informed on the subject and seem to prefer the information from Summit who often, and you can count on them to make disingenuous comments, and often misrepresent the facts to make it look better for them.

So it's a problem we've been having and multiple counties--30 counties across the state are affected, and only a handful of them have county governments that are actually working for them.

So, small-town governments don't know how to handle the tsunami coming at them and rather than fight the big dog. They seem to be screwing the pooch, which is us.

LEONARD: Okay, so the controversies as I understand it is that they involve the use of eminent domain for a private company, and another issue is sometimes with the danger inherent with the pipelines, and sometimes there's been issues with the pipeline construction. In particular, I was talking with a welder about some issues he had regarding welding, and he's a welder and he worked on the pipelines and he ended up not working for them anymore. And then there's issues of compaction. Correct? If it goes across a farm field if it's not done right that land isn't useful. Is that correct?

NORRIS: Those are all legitimate issues that we are asking for help with from our state and local governments.

LEONARD: Anything I forgot in that list?

NORRIS: Oh, there's a lot of lists. There's probably more to it than that even, you know, I have been looking for three years for some reason to support these projects. I haven't been able to find one. There is no redeeming value to them.

LEONARD: Okay, but they would argue that sequestering carbon and it's going to be used for enhanced gas recovery…

NORRIS: Well, they get they get paid the most to permanently sequester it which means that they pump it underground a mile and a half or two miles and it's supposed to stay there forever. That's what they get paid the most tax credits for, but they can also get paid to use it for enhanced oil recovery. So if we're talking about this project's value in being that it reduces carbon, there is no net value to using it for enhanced oil recovery.

LEONARD: Okay, any other issues that I forgot to address, or didn't know enough to address with respect to the problematic aspects of it that you'd like to bring up.

GLADE: Well also, the process is going to be taking vast amounts of water. Three billion gallons of water in a year, and also a vast amount of energy to liquefy the CO2 when they're capturing it. So it's it's really a boondoggle of a project because it's carbon footprint is large. It's going to take a lot of our natural resources as well.

NORRIS: That would have been something that we could..our government could have done for us is done a thorough analysis of the net benefit. But Iowa refused to do so.

LEONARD: Okay, Kathy anything to add to this section, to this part of the interview?

CARTER: Jan and Julie covered it very well. But there's also affiliated issues, for instance, one that comes to mind is the so-called man camps. So if and when construction happens, we know from past experience with other pipelines, that the man camps can create some massive difficulties for the area. They can...they've been known to deplete local food pantries, second-hand stores, so they can take men's clothing, you know, since there's no suitable laundry facilities in their man camps. There's also been a lot of concerns about sex trafficking. So there's those issues as well.

LEONARD: So man camps are where the people working on the pipelines, they set up camps?

CARTER: They'll congregate with their motorhomes, their RVs, their tents. Yes.

LEONARD: All right, so that's sort of, that's a nice overview. Thank you. Some of the issues. Jan can you tell us some of the stuff that's happening specifically in Montgomery County or in any other counties that you're aware of?

NORRIS: Well, it'd be easier to say what isn't happening. Nothing is happening. We have been petitioning our county government for three years now, to hold a discussion on the pipeline issues, and then in subsequent…after holding discussion, perhaps they would like vote in a setback ordinance, or vote in a survey ordinance, or vote in protections in the road crossing permits. But they continue to refuse, to even discuss the issue. For years. Years. And then they…two weeks ago when they were discussing changes to the public comment policy for our Board of Supervisors, they actually had the gall to complain about how difficult it is for them to hear us come in. We get two minutes every week to say something…how difficult it is, for how weary they are of hearing all the comments. But yet they still refuse to put it on the agenda to have a discussion, and that's very frustrating to the landowners.

LEONARD: And so what is their ultimate authority, do they have to grant the permit?

NORRIS: No, no, no, the state grants the permit and that's one of the things...that's one of the things that they say often is that we can't do anything and that is true. They can't decide whether the permit, whether the pipeline gets built. They can't decide if the pipeline gets to use eminent domain. There's a whole list of things that they don't get to decide and there's a very small list of things that they can decide and they can do something about. And that's what we're asking them to discuss and move on.

LEONARD: Okay, and those are easements and those are setbacks, or what are they? tell me what those things are.

NORRIS: Well the biggest thing I mean, the really the only thing these are county governments can do to help us as landowners is to set a minimum setback between our house and the pipeline. Or our livestock and the pipeline, or are communities and the pipeline. They can establish a minimum setback, some counties it's 1,000 feet, some counties 1,600 feet. it's whatever that county chooses and whatever their lawyer thinks they can defend. Says that the pipeline cannot be any closer to that to your house. One of the biggest reasons I'm fighting is because my neighbor a mile away is 288 feet. Her living room window is less than 300 feet from the pipeline, but it's across the fence. So she didn't get the option of saying yes or no. She's just stuck with living with it. Why is it okay for our County government to not say it has to be 1,000 feet from her house? Why is that unreasonable for us to ask for? And you know truthfully a thousand feet is not going to save her life either but it's a lot better than 300 feet.

LEONARD: So, do you know why they don't want to set those rules?

NORRIS: Our board chair told me he will not be responsible for Montgomery County being the reason they don't build a pipeline in western Iowa. And Summit has told him that we cannot build a pipeline if you pass this setback coordinates of a 1,000 feet. I don't believe that. I asked a GIS map maker that was helping map out how far away houses were from the pipeline route within a mile because in Sartartia, Mississippi (the site of a pipeline explosion) people a mile away were injured. So the map makers put dots on a map showing how many residences were close, how close they were to the pipeline. He identified 13 residences that would be within that 1,000 feet. Surely 13 in Montgomery County isn't that hard to route around if you just spend a little bit more money and used a little bit more effort.

LEONARD: Okay. Well very good, anything else to add about Montgomery County?

NORRIS: It's just frustrating that they refused to discuss it and just every week we have to keep going in asking them to discuss it. Tuesday, my husband made comments asking them to call, actually offering to pay the expense to have the attorney that they engaged to draft the service to draft the setback ordinance two years ago. They keep talking about it's going to cost them money to have him come back in and talk to us. So my husband offered to pay for it. But the discussion was why would we have the lawyer come back in and talk to us because we're still not going to do an ordinance. And I think it's irresponsible for them to say after two years time, you don't think anything's changed? Maybe there are some updates you need to be aware of.

And because we have phase two, I referred to phase one now, phase two is an additional 350 miles in the state of Iowa. Montgomery County is a phase one of 18 miles and a phase two of an additional 24 miles. We have an opportunity to pass a setback ordinance for phase two, if we can get it done before they file for a permit. So we have this small chance of helping people. And I don't understand why my local County Board of Supervisors is more concerned about a lawsuit from Summit than they are about protecting my neighbors. It doesn't seem right to me.

LEONARD: Okay. Thank you. Julie, would you like to explain some of the challenges that you're finding and other people in Wright County are encountering at the county level?

GLADE: Well, Wright County Board of Supervisors have been for the most part supportive of concerned landowners—we go to many of their meetings, especially at the beginning of this process in the project and they had been one of the first counties to submit an objection to the project on the IUC's website. They've also retained attorneys to help them along in the process. Make sure they have all their dot their…Have everything, all their ducks in a row.

But they will not go ahead with the most important thing I think they need to do is with ordinances. There have been nine counties that have passed ordinances with setbacks and we've encouraged our Board of Supervisors to do the same. They refer us to the Planning and Zoning Commission; needs to come from them.

We've gone to Planning and Zoning Commission meetings in Wright County. We've been to one, they don't meet very often. I think I’m running into the same thing with Kathy Carter as will probably talk about too, they don't meet very often and when they do meet they're not used to having people come to their meetings. We packed their meeting one evening to express our concerns and our wishes for them to move ahead with ordinances, but they refused to move ahead with ordinances, I believe.

Part of the reason is one of those members is President of the Iowa Corn Growers Association, and he is a conflict of interest there. He doesn't want to see setbacks put in place.

So that is our, that is our stopping point right now in Wright County. Board of Supervisors say they can't do anything without planning and zoning and planning and zoning won't won't move ahead with any kind of actions and I think people need to know too how dangerous these pipelines are. I don't know if we really talk too much about what happens in a rupture.

But the CO2 cloud that's going to come from a rupture is heavier than air, it's an asphyxiant and it suffocates people. It suffocates animals. My family has, they live in the Dead Zone with this Pipeline and proximity to their home. They have five minutes to take shelter in their home before this cloud could overtake them. So people are people are going to die. It's going to happen, and we're just calling for action from our our people at the county level who could do things to protect us that refuse to to move ahead.

LEONARD: Thank you, and to be clear, you mentioned the one member of the Board of Supervisors with a conflict of interest. I'm, my understanding is from speaking with you earlier is that he identified the conflict of interest and he isn't going to vote on the issue because of that. Is that correct?

GLADE: That's correct. And he's on the Planning and Zoning Commission and he said he would recuse himself from voting. So, yes.

LEONARD: Okay. Thank you. Kathy, would you share your thoughts from Floyd County?

CARTER: Well, both of these ladies have addressed a lot of the issues that I would have brought up and said it very well, but one of the things that's very curious to me is that with the counties refusing to put setbacks in place...They have setbacks for hog, and cattle, and chicken confinements and for the spreading of manure but they can't be bothered to put setbacks in place to protect citizens from a toxic highly pressure eyes pipeline. Really interesting to me.

Part of the problem is Summit’s heavy-handed threats of lawsuits and litigation. It scares some counties even though to my knowledge there is insurance available to the counties to help with that.

In Floyd County, part of a safety issue and the concerns why they should have setbacks is Rockford. My town is a prime example. That main line running east to west across the state will run less than a quarter mile from some of the residences in town and a half a mile from our K through 12 plus daycare school facility. Complicated by the fact that its, the pipeline is going to be crossing the Shell Rock River and as Julie said it's heavier than air it follows the lowest levels of the topography. So if there is a rupture at that River level it is just going to naturally flow...the river current is going to follow the riverbed right into town. And with only a few minutes for anyone to be able to become aware of a problem much less respond to it. It could be catastrophic just like it was an issue in Satartia, Mississippi. It could very well be that Rockford would be Iowa's version of Satartia.

If the counties don't address setbacks for the pipelines, for the CO2 pipeline projects, they can, they need to be looking into the future because we know that the governor is interested in creating hydrogen hubs in the state of Iowa that would create more pipelines. Also the possibility of methanol production. So if not now there's something coming in the future that our Board of Supervisors and our Planning and Zoning people need to address. They can't just sit back on their hands and think this is going to go away.

LEONARD: Okay. Well very good. That was a nice succinct summary by both of you. And have you made appeals. I know Governor Reynolds changed the name of the Iowa Utilities Board. But have you, have you spoke with any of those people that have helped shepherd this process through or is it too late to address them or?

GLADE: The permit is already been granted and we could write objection after objection on the website, but there's no guarantee that they're even read. I can't believe that the commission members read all of those. I feel like it's falling on deaf ears.

NORRIS: In addition to that, the commission members changed right before the hearing last year. There's a, the Iowa Utilities Board was a three-person board. And they had been through a process for a couple years and then two of them resigned and the governor was able to appoint two new ones in, I think it was April last year and then the hearings started in August. I don't know how they could have possibly caught up with the thousands and thousands and thousands of submissions that had been made on that docket. It's very doubtful to me that they ever knew as much as the outgoing ones.

crosstalk

CARTER: Prior to the hearing in Fort Dodge that started in August, the Iowa Utilities Board had held monthly meetings in a number of us could go and address the board and members directly. We had three minutes each where we could stand and speak to this.

Once those permit hearings were ended there have been no more public comment periods at any of Iowa Utility Board now, Iowa Utility Commission meetings. If there are any they're not open to the public.

GLADE: We were there every meeting, lining the back of the room and we would, a lot of us would speak and I just think they want to avoid that at this point.

NORRIS: Yeah, sometimes it got media attention and it was on the news that night.

LEONARD: And so you think they're meeting and in private?

NORRIS: Well, they have a, they also, the former chair changed the rules that their closed session just never ends. So they will, they will talk, they will present agenda items in their meeting, but they don't ever discuss or make motions on that. They do that in closed session. It's kind of weird.

LEONARD: And it's not a violation? It appear to be a violation of the open meetings act.

NORRIS: Somehow they're able to do it, and it's been a long time going so surely it would have been disputed by now. So speaking of the open meetings act I am in the midst of going through an open meetings violation with Montgomery County. On July 2nd Montgomery County finally put on the agenda to discuss the pipeline but in closed session, but they didn't but they didn't say what they were going to closed session for. When they got up to leave the room to go into closed session, they did not take a vote. And then the minutes of that meeting...the vote was not recorded in the minutes, the official minutes, and that's a violation of open meetings law. So I read up on it, did some research. I filed a complaint and the Iowa Public Information Board on September 19th, heard my complaint and accepted it and their staff had found evidence of four violations of Montgomery County, for not holding an open, for not following open meetings law correctly. In their defense, they said, Montgomery County replied that this was in no means to conceal information from the public.

And I have, I take great exception with that because how is the public to think anything other than when we have been asking you for years to discuss the pipeline in open session and you refuse, but now you hold a closed session to discuss the pipeline that none of us are privy to, how else are we supposed to look at it?

LEONARD: Okay, and my understanding is closed sessions are for potential transactions for real estate, personnel matters, litigation...

NORRIS: They used 21 5 C which says imminent litigation…because we're not it's either current litigation which we don't have any, or eminent litigation, so the county was trying to say because Summit has threatened to sue us if we pass an ordinance, we're going to talk about the ordinance in closed session to protect our legal standing. In my mind, it feels to me as a taxpayer, it feels like they are using that as cover. To have a discussion that they don't want to have in front of the public where people can hear things.

LEONARD: Okay, very good. And so your goal with this interview, this conversation is to raise awareness of the issues. To let everybody know that this is happening and probably happening in other counties as well, and that people should pay attention to the Board of Supervisors meetings and any other government entities that might be considering this, it could be cities as well and also maybe to put a little pressure on supervisors, and anything else? That's pretty good.

NORRIS: You know, I think I think Americans are spoiled right? Our government has generally worked for us, for years, and what we realizing, as folks that have maybe not been involved in local governments up to this point, but now that there's an issue that's really close to us and we're very concerned about, we're recognizing that our local governments maybe aren't responsive. They're not being responsive to us, and we're trying to call attention to that and make changes.

GLADE: And when we went first went to the Planning and Zoning Commission, all of them asked for more information. They said I don't know. I don't know enough about this project to be able to determine if we need setbacks. This is been ongoing for several years already. They're on a Planning and Zoning Commission and they need more information. I think it's just a widespread problem in our county that if it's not going through your land, you don't care and you don't know anything about it.

So unfortunately, we're the ones that have to start passing the word and trying to get the word out to everyone that they need to... you know education is everything here and people just writing letters to the editor, contacting their Board of Supervisors, coming to meetings. Just getting involved and knowing more I think is very important.

CARTER: 14 new laterals in phase two. There's a lot more counties and a lot more landowners and citizens that are becoming aware of this and finding out that their counties are unprepared. And they need to learn and they need to educate and they need to act.

NORRIS: And I like to say, you know in 2021, none of us knew what a CO2 pipeline was. We were starting from Ground Zero. Nobody knew anything. But in the 2024 phase two project, Summit doesn't get the advantage of the sneak attack this time. People have been exposed to stuff, people have had three years to learn and understand the concerns, and it's a lot. The path is not going to be as easy for them this time.

LEONARD: Okay anything to add as we close?

crosstalk

CARTER: Going back to the Iowa Utilities Board slash, Iowa Utilities Commission. You know by law they have to have a public informational meeting in each of the newly impacted counties. And each of the counties in phase two where they just recently completed that series of meetings, there was not an Iowa Utilities Commission member present at any of those meetings, and they say by law they don't have to be but it would have been nice to have the presence of somebody there other than a staffer, you know…

NORRIS: They did on phase one. They had commission board members at each phase one.

CARTER: Yes, they did.

NORRIS: And the Office of Consumer Advocate was at the table. The Office of Consumer Advocate is the organization, the group in Iowa that is supposed to be the voice for the people for utility projects. And in the phase one route a lawyer from the Office of Consumer Advocate was at the front table with Summit and the Iowa utilities board playing a role in each one of those public information meetings, these phase two meetings, the Office of Consumer Advocate was sitting in the audience and just was recognized. But not participated. I think it was…

There's also been a change, the Governor's reorganization Bill last year took away the independence of the Office of Consumer Advocate. And so now they serve at the pleasure of the Attorney General which makes them political. They don't have any protections from... it used to be they could do whatever needed to be done for the for the Iowans without fear of repercussion and now that's changed. And so what we could, what we clearly saw at the hearing last fall, they only, the Office of Consumer Advocate only put up one test of one witness. It was, I believe an engineer. But when asked if they had done the financial analysis about net value, he said we did not do those things.

His testimony was painful. I thought. Because they didn't do their job. They did not. They are Office of Consumer Advocate. They did not advocate for the consumers any longer. That has changed with the governor's reorganization last year.

GLADE: There were no tough questions from them, ever. Nothing.

NORRIS: So what we're seeing is that us as the taxpayers and the landowners. We are just getting left out to dry.

LEONARD: So this is an even bigger story than pipelines.

GLADE: Very much, so

LEONARD: Kathy anything to add?

CARTER: No, I agree completely. Jan said it well, so did Julie.

GLADE: Well, and then in the Dakotas, in North and South Dakota, They are having a lot more problems, I think, because those same kind of commissions, their PUC's, their public utility commissions are elected officials. They're not appointed as they are in Iowa. So they are accountable to the people. They've asked tough questions. They've denied permits. And we're just thankful for that happening. It's not happening in Iowa, but it is in other states.

LEONARD: And if it happens in those other states, it stops it in, Iowa, correct?

GLADE: We're hoping so, we're doing everything we can and...

NORRIS: The Iowa permit is contingent on South Dakota and North Dakota at this point.

LEONARD: Okay anything to add as we close?

Okay, so thank you Jan Norris from Montgomery County Julie Glade from Wright County and Kathy Carter from Floyd County for sharing your thoughts on what's happening in your counties and Statewide with respect to the CO2 pipelines.

GLADE, NORRIS, and CARTER: Thank you so much. Thank you for listening.

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