Summit says it wants to withhold pipeline safety report to protect public safety

by Jared Strong, Iowa Capital Dispatch

Dispersion models that are sought as evidence for Summit Carbon Solutions’ upcoming pipeline permit hearing could enable someone to breach the pipeline to cause maximum human casualties, the company argues.

The company on Wednesday, Aug. 16, appealed a judge’s decision earlier in the week that compelled the company to provide the information, which attempts to predict where a plume of carbon dioxide might go if it escapes Summit’s proposed carbon dioxide pipeline.

The judge’s ruling “ignores the underlying public-safety reasons for protecting information that could give a roadmap to someone intent on harming the pipeline and — more importantly — Iowans,” the company said in its appeal.

The gas can suffocate people at high concentrations. It is heavier than air and — when released from a pipeline — has the potential to travel in a dense plume for long distances.

Summit initially sought to withhold the dispersion models from the Sierra Club of Iowa, the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation and several counties because pipeline safety considerations are outside the purview of state regulators.

The Iowa Utilities Board approves the routes of hazardous liquid pipelines in the state. Federal officials ensure the pipelines are constructed and operated safely.

But Toby Gordon, an administrative law judge for the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals, said the safety models might be necessary to determine the pipeline route.

In Summit’s appeal, it shifted its focus for withholding the information to the potential for pipeline sabotage. It cited a recent decision in North Dakota that barred the public release of its dispersion models there, which was largely based on security concerns.

But the situation in the two states is different: In North Dakota, Summit provided those models to the North Dakota Public Service Commission, which ultimately denied the company a route permit. The IUB, however, did not require Summit to provide them.

Summit has provided other documentation in Iowa under a protective order that bars its public release.

“The IUB needs to know how far the carbon dioxide plume from a leak or rupture of the Summit pipeline would disperse in order to properly approve ‘the location and route’ of the pipeline so as to protect persons and property,” Wally Taylor, a Sierra Club attorney, has argued.

Gordon, the judge, was tasked by the board to consider disputes over information requests to the company. His decisions can be appealed to the board, and the board’s decisions can be appealed to state district court.

It’s unclear when the IUB will decide the issue. Summit’s evidentiary hearing is set to start Tuesday. There are pending requests with the board and in district court that seek to delay that hearing.

Contracts dispute

There is also a pending appeal of a separate decision by Gordon that ordered Summit to provide its unredacted contracts with ethanol plants to the attorneys of groups that requested them. Gordon said the terms of those contracts might be used as evidence to verify the company’s economic benefit claims for ethanol producers and Iowa agriculture.

Summit opposed requests for the contracts, in part, because it said it couldn’t trust certain attorneys to keep them confidential. On Monday, an attorney for several counties that obtained redacted versions of the documents allegedly filed the agreements inadvertently in Summit’s public IUB docket.

“Counsel for the counties subsequently contacted IUB staff and the publicly-filed offtake agreements were removed from the docket, but not without a window of time during which the offtake agreements were publicly available to any person with an internet connection,” the company said in a Wednesday IUB filing.

Summit submitted copies of those agreements to the IUB on Wednesday for a confidential review as part of the appeal process.

Summit’s project would span more than 2,000 miles in five states. It plans to transport captured carbon dioxide from more than 30 ethanol plants to North Dakota for underground sequestration.

Commissioners in that state denied the company a route permit early this month, but Summit said it will ask them to reconsider the decision. That denial has given new ammunition to pipeline opponents, who seek a delay of the evidentiary hearing and deride the proposal as a “pipeline to nowhere.”

The hearing is set to start at 10 a.m. on Aug. 22 at the Cardiff Event Center in Fort Dodge. Video of the hearing will be broadcast online.

— Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.