(Des Moines, Iowa) – The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports another Iowa county is being sued by Summit Carbon Solutions over attempts to regulate the company’s planned carbon dioxide pipeline across Iowa. In 2022, Summit sued Story County and Shelby County in U.S. District Court for Southern District of Iowa. Both lawsuits alleged the locally elected county boards of supervisors were attempting to impose on the project siting requirements that are the exclusive province of federal regulators.
In December 2023, a federal judge sided with Summit and permanently barred the two Iowa counties from enforcing their ordinances that restrict the placement of carbon dioxide pipelines. This past week, Summit sued Bremer County over the same issue. The new lawsuit claims that despite the December 2023 court ruling in the two previous cases, Bremer County has passed and let stand similar – and, in some respects, identical — local regulations of carbon dioxide pipelines and related construction activity. The county is also accused of threatening to fine Summit if it does not comply with those ordinances.
The company says that on Oct. 30, 2024, Bremer County Attorney Darius Robinson wrote a letter to Summit’s legal counsel, stating that Summit was not in compliance with ordinances passed in September 2024, and threatening to fine Summit. In the letter, Robinson allegedly warned Summit that “that any non-compliance with the Bremer County ordinance can result in all legal remedies being pursued” and formally requested that company representatives attend an upcoming public meeting to discuss the matter.
As a result, the company says in its court filings, Summit must now seek declaratory and injunctive relief against the enforcement of the Bremer County ordinances. Bremer County has yet to file a response to the lawsuit.
Summit’s planned pipeline is intended to transport carbon dioxide captured from more than 50 ethanol plants across Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska. Plans call for the pipeline to utilize a network of more than 2,500 miles of underground pipes across the five states and deliver it to a site in North Dakota. In Iowa, the pipeline will travel through 39 counties, including Bremer County.
Construction of the pipeline project is already underway, and Summit has been engaged with the Iowa Utilities Commission for more than three years as part of the planning and permitting process. The commission has granted Summit a permit from the first phase of the project and the company is now in the process of securing the Iowa permit for phase two, which will serve ethanol plants east and west of Bremer County.
Summit says it has already obtained voluntary easements for much of the proposed route across Iowa and has paid more than $159 million to Iowa landowners for access.
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