SIOUX CITY — The Sioux City Council voted Monday to approve a resolution opposing the construction and operation of CO2 pipelines in or near the city.
The vote was 4 to 0 in favor of the resolution. Mayor Pro Tem Dan Moore abstained.
“The thing that gives me the greatest pause with a pipeline like this is the way that they’re going about it through eminent domain and becoming a utility and things like that,” Councilman Alex Watters said before the vote. “And it’s that erosion of local control that gives me greatest pause.”
The resolution the council approved identifies the two pipelines as:
Summit Carbon Solutions turning north on the east side of Sioux City continuing into Plymouth County
Navigator Heartland Greenway continuing in a northeasterly direction towards Lawton
The resolution states that “granting eminent domain for private companies sets a dangerous precedent” and that both routes are “dangerously close” to residences, business areas, Sioux Gateway Airport and the 185th Air Guard, as well as the sister cities of Sergeant Bluff and Lawton.
The resolution notes that “major highways will be affected by construction and operation of hazardous CO2” and “construction of hazardous CO2 pipelines would result in irreparable damage to land.”
The proposed Summit Carbon Pipeline would pipe carbon dioxide from ethanol and fertilizer plants to an underground sequestration site in North Dakota. The pipeline would run through 30 counties in Iowa, including several in Northwest Iowa — Woodbury,
Plymouth, Sioux, Lyon, O’Brien, Cherokee, Clay, Dickinson, Ida and Crawford, and would extend into Dakota, Dixon and Wayne counties in Nebraska.
Navigator decided to cancel its Midwest pipeline last month, citing in a statement the “unpredictable nature of the regulatory and government processes involved, particularly in South Dakota and Iowa.”
