Good, Bad, Indifferent?

In lieu of posting my next segment of the Leadership Series, I decided to dive down a deep rabbit hole. Which rabbit hole, you ask? Let me explain.

It began Friday morning, I was browsing the local newspaper at the coffee shop. I admit, I don’t stay updated with local (or national, for that matter) news as well as I should. It gives me anxiety and fear for the future, which I’m sure it does for the vast majority of its readers. However, the front page caught my attention. It was actually Thursday’s paper, not yet thrown out. I began to read it since I knew small tidbits here and there about that topic, but haven’t heard anything in awhile.

I live in the Midwest; farm land for miles and miles. Corn, beans, corn, beans. That’s basically it. Occasionally there’s a field with some cows and a few trees here and there, but not many. For the past few years, there has been a continuous battle between generational farmers against a private company who wants to put a CO2 pipeline straight through their fields; the same fields used to grow crops and provide food for their tables, their families. I can’t even begin to count the number of yard signs I’ve seen throughout the state with big sign out front: NO CO2 PIPELINES. No body wants these pipelines to come through the state, at least not on their private property.

Cut to: Thursday’s paper. Front page. The Iowa Utilities Board has granted this private company permission to enact eminent domain. Eminent domain grants the government or authorized entities the authority to acquire private property for public use, provided fair compensation is offered to property owners. In many cases involving CO2 pipelines, the landowner retains the ability to use the property once construction is complete.

Now, I don’t pretend to know a single thing about any of this, other than what others have said to me and what was in the paper. Cue furious, coffee induced research for the next eight hours.

There are other pipelines within the country located in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and North Dakota, all for CO2. The idea behind it is to capture CO2 emissions produced from various facilities to pump back into the ground, or to be used for other commercial products. I found all this information, and much, much more, within these white papers here.

I took the liberty of splicing it down a bit so it was less intense to read through, and formatted it in a Q&A style.

There are some questions that sparked additional questions that I have yet to find the answer to so more research is needed. Long story short, the state blatantly ignoring the voices of it’s citizens is concerning. If they’re willing to allow eminent domain for a private company to come in and use up precious farm land, imagine what else they’d be willing to do.

What do you think? Good? Bad? Indifferent? I’d love to hear others thoughts on the matter.