About 40 rural landowners affected by Summit’s carbon pipeline on Wednesday spoke at the first Iowa Utilities Commission monthly meeting in two years. The landowners raised concerns about the validity of Summit’s project and asked the IUC to dismiss Summit’s 15 pending dockets.

Landowners asked the utilities commission to revoke the permit granted to Summit, pointing out that South Dakota regulators have denied Summit’s permit in that state. The Iowa landowners said they’ve been left in limbo, unable to make decisions about their own land.

Many at the meeting reported finding Summit surveyors on their land without permission, with some calling the sheriff to have them removed. Others reported that the pipeline would be placed within feet of their kitchen windows. One woman reported installing new drainage tile on her farm and was told that if any of the tiles were damaged, she would not be permitted to fix them, that instead she would have to notify Summit, who would then fix the tile.

“I just put $200,000 worth of pattern tile on my farm in 2019 and Summit’s proposal goes through every one of those tile lines, which is somewhere above 40 tile lines. And then if there’s a break in that tile line, I’m not allowed to fix it, which we would normally do the next day,” said Sheila Hebenstreit, owner of Hebenstreit Ag Consulting and agronomist at West Central Coop in Jefferson. “If it’s broken, I have to contact them, they have to come out and they have to deal with it, which, again, we would do immediately and protect our own living, our own income, which they are jeopardizing. It would be similar to if the plumber told you that you cannot touch anything in your kitchen because your pipes broke, because you don’t have permission from your plumber to do that and just let the water run through your entire home unobstructed.”

The pipeline has been a source of controversy over eminent domain, especially during the most recent Iowa legislative session. Summit has 12% of easements signed and 1,492 easements unsigned along the pipeline route, according to the Sierra Club.

“As of today, Summit has secured just 12% easements of Phase 2 parcels – that means 88% of landowners have not signed and are not going to sign. And of that meager 12% signed are easements purchased from Navigator when they left the state and others are ethanol or Summit owned land,” Peg Rasmussen, a landowner impacted by Summit in Montgomery County, said in a press release. “The Exhibit H maps filed by Summit to the Iowa Utilities Commission expose the truth, Summit has absolutely failed to convince citizens there is an appetite for this project in Iowa.”

The Iowa Utilities Commission approved a permit that would allow Summit to build a 2,500-mile hazardous liquid pipeline that would capture carbon dioxide emissions from about 60 ethanol plants and transport those emissions to an underground storage unit in North Dakota.Supporters of the project have said the pipeline could lead to new sources of energy, a top priority of the Trump administration and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who visited Ames last week.