With Iowa Bill Nixed, Eminent Domain for Carbon Pipeline Draws Heartland Heat

‘We can do better,’ Gov. Kim Reynolds said in her veto of lawmakers’ ban on companies seizing private land for a 2,500-mile five-state project.

Iowa landowners attend an Iowa Utilities Board hearing on permitting of the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline project, which would require easements on hundreds of private properties, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in August 2023. Courtesy Jessica Mazour

A special legislative session looms in Iowa, where House Republican leaders are calling for lawmakers to convene in Des Moines to overturn Gov. Kim Reynolds’s veto of a bill adopted in May that would restrict the use of eminent domain in pipeline siting.

“This veto is a major setback for Iowa,” Iowa House Speaker Rep. Pat Grassley said in a statement that included a petition “to reconvene the Legislature.”

Grassley, grandson of eight-term U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), faces at least one obstacle in garnering the two-thirds supermajority needed for a special session: Iowa Senate Republicans.

“I expect that the majority of our caucus would not be interested in any attempt to override her veto,” state Senate Majority Leader Sen. Jack Whitver said in a widely published statement supporting the governor’s veto.

Reynolds, a two-term Republican governor not seeking 2026 reelection, announced on June 11 that she was red-lining House File 639 because it would set “a troubling precedent that threatens Iowa’s energy reliability, economy, and reputation as a place where businesses can invest with confidence.”

“We can do better,” Reynolds concluded in her three-page veto message.

HF 639 was adopted after exhaustive debate spanning legislative sessions since 2021, when Summit Carbon Solutions proposed building its $9 billion, 2,500-mile carbon dioxide Midwest Carbon Express Pipeline to funnel carbon emissions from 57 ethanol plants across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.

The CO2 would be “sequestered,” or stored, underground in North Dakota’s Oliver and Mercer counties, not far from Dakota Gasification Company’s 25-year-old, 205-mile Souris Valley Pipeline, which funnels the “captured” CO2 into Saskatchewan, Canada.

Summit planned to break ground in 2023 and be operational by 2026. But the project—touted as the world’s largest CO2 pipeline—has been beset by lawsuits and restrictions imposed by states and counties.

In June 2024, the Iowa Utilities Commission approved the pipeline’s first phase of its planned 700-mile track across the state, and granted Summit the right to invoke eminent domain in condemning “for public good” easements from landowners who would not voluntarily sign agreements to allow the pipeline on their land.

In November 2024, the North Dakota Public Service Commission, which had denied Summit’s proposal in 2023, approved its permit to build across 333 miles. The following month, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission green-lighted its 28-mile pipeline segment in Minnesota.

Neither state granted the company a right to use eminent domain in securing easements from reluctant landowners.

Summit is also embroiled in lawsuits in Nebraska, which does not have statewide pipeline permitting, meaning that it must secure conditional use permits from each of the nine counties along its 320-mile route. One county has denied its application, and several others have postponed votes.

In South Dakota, public utility commissioners have twice denied it a permit, and during their 2025 session, lawmakers adopted a bill prohibiting “eminent domain for a pipeline that carries carbon dioxide,” which Gov. Larry Rhoden signed into law in March.

The Midwest Carbon Express is a 2,000-mile web of carbon-capture pipelines proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions. Courtesy Summit Carbon Solutions

Strange Bedfellows

The proposed pipeline has roiled Iowa politics and evolved into an alliance of strange bedfellows.

Climate and environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, Bold Iowa, and Food & Water Watch, have found common ground in opposition to the pipeline with landowners who have formed an ad hoc “Iowa Easement Team.” Their position is supported by more than 40 Republican lawmakers, eight of 29 county commissions on the pipeline route, the Iowa Farmers Union, and conservative groups such as the Freesoil Foundation, which has former Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) as a prominent spokesman.

During the January 2024 Iowa presidential caucus, GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, escorted by King, touted opposition to the pipeline, and now-Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. based his entire election pitch on his opposition to the pipeline when he spoke at the 2023 Iowa State Fair as an independent presidential candidate.

Alongside the governor, Summit’s pipeline is supported by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, Iowa Corn Growers Association, ethanol refiners, manufacturers such as John Deere, a dozen county commissions, and an array of ad hoc organizations of landowners and businesses.

Several bills—including a 2023 measure to allow eminent domain only if 90 percent of landowners along the route sign voluntary easements—were adopted in the House, but none advanced in the Senate until this year.

HF 639, which includes parts of six bills, passed the House as an omnibus in an 85–10 vote on March 26, but was stagnated in the Senate until the session’s last week, when 12 GOP senators pledged to withdraw votes on budget cuts unless it was heard.

HF 639 was adopted on May 13—two days before adjournment—in a 27–22 tally, with 13 Republicans joining all 14 Democrats in moving the measure to Reynolds’s desk.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent candidate in the 2024 presidential election, discusses Summit Carbon Solution's proposed pipeline, at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa, on Aug. 12, 2023. John Haughey/The Epoch Times

To Be Continued

One reason why the bill stalled in the Senate was that a provision in President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget would have allowed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to issue licenses for pipelines, preempting local and state regulators.

However, the federal pipeline preemption provision was removed two days before the House adopted the budget on May 22 and sent it to the Senate.

HF 639 defines what constitutes “public good” in the use of eminent domain; requires hazardous liquid pipeline companies carry a greater amount of insurance and restore damaged farmland; prohibits renewal of a CO2 pipeline project after 25 years; places constraints on pipeline companies filing lawsuits against landowners; and requires that Iowa Utilities commissioners attend hearings on pipeline projects.

In her veto, Reynolds said the bill lacked “clear, careful lines” in defining the insurance and reparations guidelines, and feared that it could lead to Iowa losing “leadership” as the nation’s top biofuel production state.

In calling for a special session to override Reynolds’s veto, Grassley said the governor’s rejection “is a setback not only for landowners who have been fighting across Iowa, but for the work the House of Representatives has put in for four years to get legislation such as HF 639 passed.

“We will not stop fighting and stand firm on our commitment until landowners in Iowa are protected against Eminent Domain for private gain,” he vowed.

But they may need to wait until Iowa’s 2026 session. Whitver, state Sen. Mike Bousselot, and Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair are among chamber leaders who say it’s unlikely that the 21 Republican senators who voted against HF 639 in May will support returning for a special session to vote against it again.

HF 639 “was not a property owners rights bill,” but rather “[one] that’s just going to facilitate activists,” Sinclair said June 5 on Iowa Press.

In supporting Reynolds’s veto, Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said carbon capture projects are “an entry to ultra-low carbon fuel industry” that Iowa must develop or face “very real, very severe economic consequences.”

“This is a classic example of why our system of government has checks and balances,” he said in a statement. “Any thoughtful review of this bill would determine that it would lead to higher energy prices for Iowans, hamper future economic development, hold back job creation, and stifle new markets for Iowa farmers.”