IUB sets new public meetings for Wolf Carbon pipeline proposal

The Iowa Utilities Board has set a new round of public informational meetings for a carbon dioxide pipeline proposed by Wolf Carbon Solutions that would run through several Eastern Iowa counties, including Linn County. The new public meetings will be held in early December after Wolf Carbon Solutions identified “anomalies” in the process of notifying landowners along the pipeline’s proposed route. The notification issues were raised during the first series of public meetings, including at an Aug. 30 meeting at the Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. At that meeting, Wolf Carbon officials said they decided not to notify more than 5,200 property owners along the two-mile-wide pipeline corridor because the company determined their properties would not be directly impacted by the project. However, after an internal review of the notification process, Wolf Carbon officials “recognize(s) and acknowledges some anomalies have occurred that potentially resulted in certain landowners not receiving notice by certified mail, separate from Wolf’s efforts to provide notice by other means, such as the properly published public newspaper notices.” Johnson County was included in the first round of meetings in late August and early September, but the pipeline is no longer projected to run through Johnson County, said Angela Braun, a Wolf spokesperson. Wolf Carbon filed a notice with the Iowa Utilities Board Oct. 12 to hold four public informational meetings. The in-person meetings will be held as follows:

• Cedar County – Monday, Dec. 5, noon, Cedar County Fairgrounds, The Matthews Building, 220th Street, Tipton
• Linn County – Monday, Dec. 5, 5:30 p.m., Hawkeye Downs, South Hall, 4400 Sixth St. SW, Cedar Rapids
• Clinton County – Tuesday, Dec. 6, noon, Wild Rose Convention Center, 777 Wild Rose Drive, Clinton
• Scott County – Tuesday, Dec. 6, 5:30 p.m., River Center (Adler Theater), 136 E. Third St., Davenport

Wolf Carbon Solutions has proposed building the 280-mile carbon dioxide sequestration pipeline between Cedar Rapids and Decatur, Illinois. The pipeline, referred to as the Mt. Simon Hub by Wolf Carbon Solutions officials, would transport liquefied carbon dioxide through a pressurized 16-inch pipeline from ADM plants in Cedar Rapids and Clinton to an ADM sequestration facility near Decatur, Illinois, where the gas would be pumped underground at the Mt. Simon Sandstone saline reservoir for permanent storage. The pipeline, first proposed in January, would run through the southern portion of Linn County southeastward through Cedar, Clinton and Scott counties in Iowa, then further eastward to the sequestration site. About 90 miles of the pipeline would traverse Iowa properties, including about 20 miles in Linn County. ADM says the pipeline would have the capacity to transport 12 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year from its Cedar Rapids and Clinton plants. Wolf Carbon officials said the pipeline would have significant spare capacity to serve industrial customers looking to decarbonize across the Midwest and Ohio River Valley. They also say the project would bring a $1.1 billion economic impact to Iowa, including a $208 million investment in Linn County, and offer more than 400 construction jobs with $50 million in overall wages and salaries during construction. ADM says its existing carbon capture and sequestration capabilities in Decatur have allowed it to safely and permanently store underground more than 3.5 million metric tons of CO2, paving the way for increased decarbonization of the company’s operations. The projects are touted as an environmentally-friendly solution to deal with carbon dioxide emissions from large-scale industrial facilities, but critics question the environmental claims and say the amount of carbon being proposed for sequestration is a small percentage of overall CO2 emissions. They also cite safety concerns about the pipelines, which would operate under high pressures. Several documents have been filed for the project under the IUB’s official docket for the project, HLP-2022-0002.