Opinion: Carbon pipelines before heritage and water quality — is that the Iowa way?
As you know, three carbon pipelines are proposed to cut through Iowa. One headed north to North Dakota and two headed to Illinois. These are in direct opposition to Iowa values and our heritage, and, we have other needs in Iowa that need attention before we consider allowing this.
I am a farm manager in Iowa, and lines would go through eight tracts of land I manage. Most of these farms are long-term ownership, some with over 100 years in the same family. All oppose these projects, but we feel the deck is stacked against us before we get started. The precedent was already set with the Dakota Access pipeline with a private company with the threat of eminent domain hanging over everyone’s heads.
These new projects are much the same, where investors' only real values are making money but tout the weak excuse that they are helping farmers and Iowans for generations. If it wasn’t for federal tax credits and the fact the Iowa Utilities Board and the Iowa Supreme Court allowed Dakota Access to slide through, they wouldn’t consider “helping us.” Where will this end, if we don’t put down our foot now and stick up for our landowners and the land that took millions of years to develop into the productive land it is today?
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They say they are offering fair market value, but that is not enough to force you to give up your land and heritage to allow a high-pressure hazardous pipeline through it forever. They say they will negotiate individually, but in Iowa these settlements are not open records like a real estate sale, so they don’t have to reveal who got what. You can be assured that the compliant will get less than the people who adamantly stick up for their rights. Is this fair market value?
The owners will then have to pay capital gains on what they receive, thus not netting near the total amount. They will then pay the real estate taxes on that strip of land while not having full right to ever build near it. The permanent easement is 50 feet, but the effect is much wider. Are you going to build a home 60 feet from a high pressure hazardous pipeline? How about 150 feet? I don’t think so. In Iowa, many value the land as a gift that we have to protect and understand the effect of making short-sighted decisions that affect it in a permanent way.
If they want to get voluntary easements and wind their way to their goal, then that is their choice, but forcing someone to sell an easement is not the Iowa way, and we need new laws to protect this right of landowners.
Another point: We cannot get near enough funds in Iowa to clean up our water and keep it clean, but these folks can find billions of dollars of federal tax credits to disturb our soil and force our innocent landowners to go along with a private for-profit project. Big Ag doesn’t want to get fully behind a clean water plan in Iowa, but you can be assured they are behind this one.
You wonder why? Follow the money. There is no money in clean water, but there is in keeping Iowa heading down the path we are on. Cover crops are constantly touted as part of our salvation, but I took a road trip from Ames to Sioux Falls not long ago and counted six tracts of land with cover crops. This was a diagonal going northwest though 10 counties in the heart of prime farmland and livestock country.
We have a chance in the next election to change the course of Iowa, and there has never been a more critical time to take our state back from outside interests, install more detailed water monitoring systems and then require compliance to make sure we protect the water. That is the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is not doing well. We need citizens to stand up so the politicians will follow — but the ones we have now will not take a determined lead to stand up for all our citizens, our land and our water.
Again, follow the money, but we can overcome that if we are determined to do so. The next 10 months will see if we win or lose.
Mark E. Gannon runs Gannon Real Estate & Consulting in Ames.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: Carbon pipelines threaten heritage, water quality efforts
