Letters: Iowa House unanimously passes feel-good, do-nothing bill
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To the editor:
For the past several months, landowners who will be negatively impacted by hazardous CO2 pipelines have been appealing to the Iowa Legislature for help. At issue is a loophole in the state’s eminent domain law that allows the Iowa Utilities Board to waive the requirement for public use before granting permits. More specifically, landowners along the proposed route fear their property will be taken by eminent domain if they do not sign voluntary easements.
After months of skirting the issue, and even pulling an effective bill before it could pass the Commerce Committee, the Iowa House finally did something. This past week, HF2442 was added as an amendment to an unrelated bill and unanimously passed a vote in the full House. The bill, which was introduced by Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, places a moratorium on the use of eminent domain by the IUB or pipeline companies for one year.
With high-fives all around, our representatives rushed to the press in order to assure landowners they could now negotiate with pipeline companies without fear of losing their land through eminent domain. Lawmakers then returned to work, confident that they had solved the eminent domain conundrum just in the nick of time for it to be a non-issue before the campaign season begins.
Far from being assuaged by these misguided efforts, impacted landowners are appalled. HF2442 is a feel-good, do-nothing bill. The lawmakers have not “given” us a year-long moratorium on the impending use of eminent domain as the permit process through the IUB will most likely take that long, anyway. Nothing has changed. There is no guarantee that eminent domain will not be used eventually to take private property for a hazardous CO2 pipeline in the future.
Furthermore, the bill does nothing to stop the companies’ land agents from continuing to relentlessly harass landowners into signing voluntary easements. If anything, it allows the pipeline companies to work under cover of the false assumption that the threat of eminent domain is off the table. The bill is a sham, and property owners must be made aware before they unwittingly sign these permanent easements.
At this time, it is unknown if a similar bill is working its way through the Iowa Senate on the way to becoming law. Even so, all legislators need to know impacted landowners have not been fooled. Instead of hiding behind a bogus fix, our State Senators and Representatives should step up to the plate and close the loophole in Iowa’s current eminent domain law before this session ends.
Bonnie Ewoldt,
Rural Milford resident and
Crawford County landowner
