Summit Carbon Downsizes Pipeline Route Affecting Area Communities

Summit Carbon Solutions plans to shrink the scope of its pipeline project in Iowa by about 200 miles. Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reports.

The company has submitted a revised route plan to the Iowa Utilities Commission. Summit no longer plans to connect its pipeline to ethanol plants in St. Ansgar, Corning, Hanlontown or Shenandoah. That means the pipeline route will no longer stretch through Adams, Fremont, Mitchell,  Montgomery, Page, Pottawattamie, Shelby and Worth Counties. Pipeline miles will be reduced in the following four counties — Crawford, Dickinson, Floyd and Sioux. These changes affect about 400 landowners. Summit still plans to connect to 27 Iowa ethanol plants, but after regulatory set backs in the Dakotas, the company aims to connect with a carbon pipeline in Nebraska that’s already operating.

Summit’s CEO says there’s urgency in getting the project started due to economic pressure in the ag sector. An attorney for the Sierra Club’s Iowa chapter says the project has been on shaky ground for a while and this latest move suggests it’s falling apart. For five years, a group of landowners along the pipeline route have been lobbying Iowa legislators to pass a bill that would forbid Summit from using eminent domain authority to seize their property. Members of the group say they’re celebrating Wednesday. Pipeline backers say the project is essential to the future of Iowa’s ethanol industry and, if it isn’t built, Nebraska will become the main place to make ethanol because it has an operating carbon pipeline.