Dear Friends,
[My questioning of Summit witnesses on behalf of Bold Iowa at the IUB hearing on September 7 can be found here on pages 2269-2278, 2402-2415, and 2456-2462.]
The Navigator CO2 Pipeline — brought to you by the warm-and-fuzzy corporate duo of Valero and BlackRock — is officially dead. That’s right. We, the People, beat two Fortune 500 companies!
CO2 pipeline proposals by Summit and Wolf remain live rounds. But landowners along the Wolf route haven’t heard a peep from Wolf since March. And Summit just announced its pipeline would be delayed by two years. These developments are encouraging.
Here’s my analysis as to why we prevailed against Navigator and will eventually defeat Summit and Wolf:
A multi-state, grassroots strategy. Last month, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission denied Navigator’s request for a permit. Meanwhile, both South Dakota and the North Dakota Public Service Commission denied Summit’s request. In Minnesota and Iowa, resistance to CO2 pipelines has been widespread. In Nebraska, counties are able to pass local ordinances regarding siting of pipelines, which presents a huge obstacle to Summit. And just this week, the Illinois Commerce Commission’s staff recommended the Commission deny Wolf’s request for a permit.
Things were different in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Most of the opposition was in Iowa and North Dakota, with some in South Dakota and very little in Illinois. The current united front, and the fact that each state presents different opportunities for slowing down or stopping the process, was key to defeating Navigator.
Opposition to eminent domain. More than anything, the narrative against CO2 pipelines has centered on the injustice of forcibly taking land for the benefit of a big corporation. I remember a meeting in January, 2015, when the “coalition” that formed to fight DAPL decided its message was “protect our water.” My wife, Kathy, was the only landowner present. (Point of personal interest: That meeting was where Kathy and I met.) Each of our suggestions that the narrative should focus on the abuse of eminent domain was quickly shot down, which made it a lot harder to build a true coalition between environmentalists and landowners.
Front-line folk are leading the fight. The people most immediately impacted by CO2 pipelines — farmers and rural landowners — are the face of the movement. Pipeline opponents learned from previous mistakes, embraced the strongest argument against CO2 pipelines, and insisted that primarily landowner voices — not urban environmentalists — carry the message.
Employ a legal strategy early on. With DAPL, legal resistance came later in the fight — too late, unfortunately. This time, a veritable busload of lawyers has weighed in on behalf of landowners. It’s an expensive investment, for sure, but highly effective.
Pursue a legislative strategy. Several states, including Iowa, saw efforts to pass bills to restrict the use of eminent domain to build CO2 pipelines. Even though none of those bills passed, the effort helped raise the profile of public opposition.
Some Iowa Republican politicians are speaking out. Even though Iowa’s most powerful Republicans back the pipelines, a handful of Republican lawmakers have stood with farmers and landowners. Twenty formed “Republican Legislative Intervenors for Justice (RLIJ),” and some testified at the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) hearing for Summit last month.
RLIJ even had the chutzpah to request that Summit’s CEO, Bruce Rastetter, be subpoenaed. That was gutsy, given that Rastetter is one of the biggest donors to Iowa Republicans. We’ll see if Governor Kim Reynolds (who has quietly backed Rastetter’s proposal) finds opponents for her dissenting colleagues, as she did in 2022 with Republican lawmakers who wouldn’t fall in line with her effort to divert state education funds to private schools.
The most prominent Republican voice opposing CO2 pipelines is former US Congressman Steve King. He and I met over lunch earlier this fall and shared strategy ideas. It was a productive meeting. Yes, politics — especially pipeline fights — makes strange bedfellows.
A few Iowa Democratic politicians spoke out. Well, two, really. Kudos to Rep. Chuck Isenhart for participating as an intervenor at IUB’s Summit hearing. However, the main focus of his testimony — sequestering the CO2 in Iowa instead of North Dakota — was hardly the best angle to pursue. (See the transcript from the September 19 IUB hearing, page 3755 and again beginning on page 3793.)
Rep. Sharon Steckman filed a letter on August 9, 2023, asking the IUB to slow down Summit’s permitting process. Eleven other House Democrats signed on to that letter. Good, but that’s entry level stuff.
To her credit, Steckman published a much stronger letter to the editor of the Globe Gazette on October 10: “There is a deadly proposal knocking on the doors of our Iowa farmers. … CO2 is odorless, colorless, and an asphyxiant that can suffocate all living things within 1.4 miles.”
Where does the Iowa Democratic leadership stand on CO2 pipelines? With both feet planted firmly on the sidelines, which is a solid position from which to continue to lose elections.
I frequently write/talk about Iowa Democrats’ rural and working class problem. Coming out against CO2 pipelines could have greatly improved the Party’s prospects. But nope. Mostly crickets.
Here’s what I wrote leading up to the 2022 election: If Democrats Lose in November, Blame This. The perspective I offered is still painfully relevant to the 2024 election. The Party’s leadership is welcome to use my advice. It’s free, though it seems they prefer to take bad advise from pricey consultants.
[Check out the Fallon Forum podcast at this link.]
Thanks! — Ed Fallon