Iowa Utilities Board sets public info meetings for lateral CO2 line in Floyd, Mitchell counties

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Iowa Board of Utilities has set public meetings next month in Floyd and Mitchell counties to provide information to property owners potentially affected by an extension to the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline previously proposed to cross Floyd County.

Summit Carbon filed an additional application in June for a permit to build a lateral line from the current proposed carbon dioxide pipeline’s location near Rockford, going north to almost the Minnesota border to serve the Absolute Energy ethanol plant at that location.

Both informational meetings are scheduled for the same day, at these times and locations:

• Tuesday, Aug. 8, at noon at the Cedar River Complex Event Center in Osage for Mitchell County.
• Tuesday, Aug. 8, 6 p.m. at the Youth Enrichment Center at the Floyd County Fairgrounds near Charles City for Floyd County.

In case of inclement weather that prevents the meetings from taking place as scheduled, they will be held the following week, on Wednesday, Aug. 16, at the same times and locations.

Summit Carbon Solutions had applied to the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) in January 2022 for a permit to build about 710 miles of pipeline in Iowa, going through 30 counties as part of a five-state project that would build a total of about 2,000 miles of underground pipe to carry liquid carbon dioxide from ethanol plants and other high-CO2-producing sources to North Dakota where it would be sequestered in geological formations deep underground.

Summits’ additional pipeline permit application filed last month would add on to that, building another 31 miles of pipeline to transport CO2 from the Absolute Energy plant to connect to what would be then the existing pipeline.

A Summit spokesperson at a Floyd County Board of Supervisors meeting last week said the lateral line would be built about a year after the main line is completed, if both projects are approved by the IUB.

As part of the process of getting a permit from the IUB, pipeline companies must hold public information meetings with a member of the IUB, company officials and a member of the Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate in attendance, and individually invite all property owners within a corridor area where the underground pipeline is proposed to be built.

The pipeline cannot contact those property owners in a county regarding a proposed 50-foot wide permanent easement through their property until the informational meeting has been held in that county.