Primarily citing safety concerns for county residents, the Linn County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Dec. 14 to postpone consideration of a new county ordinance to establish setbacks from private hazardous material pipelines. The board had approved first consideration of the ordinance Dec. 12 on a 2-1 vote, but reconsidered the process after hearing comments […]
Primarily citing safety concerns for county residents, the Linn County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Dec. 14 to postpone consideration of a new county ordinance to establish setbacks from private hazardous material pipelines.
The board
had approved first consideration of the ordinance Dec. 12 on a 2-1 vote, but reconsidered the process after hearing comments from a number of concerned residents and holding a closed-session meeting with the county’s civil legal team Dec. 13.
The board decided to postpone the process indefinitely while further examining portions of the ordinance, particularly a clause that would permit setbacks of as little as 300 feet in residential areas for hazardous material pipelines approved by the Iowa Utilities Board, if the company installing the pipeline could make a sufficiently compelling case to reduce the setback.
The indefinite postponement likely means an ordinance won’t be approved before the end of 2022, a situation acknowledged by supervisor Stacey Walker, who is leaving the board at year’s end and will attend his final board meetings next week.
“I would encourage my colleagues to think about creating not the most prohibitive ordinance necessarily, but the safest ordinance we can construct,” Mr. Walker said. “If it truly is the case that we don't have the ability to say yes or no whether a pipeline can be here, if one is to be here, what are the conditions that can be created to make it the safest? We want to make sure we did everything we could to keep people safe.”
The county’s proposed ordinance would establish two setback standards, one for places of public assembly and another for private dwellings A separate setback standard is also proposed for future growth areas of Linn County.
The county’s action is being spurred in large measure by Wolf Carbon’s
proposal to build a 280-mile carbon dioxide sequestration pipeline between Cedar Rapids and Decatur, Illinois. The pipeline, referred to as the Mt. Simon Hub, would transport liquefied CO2 through a pressurized 16-inch pipeline from ADM plants in Cedar Rapids and Clinton to an ADM sequestration facility near Decatur, Illinois.
Wolf has not yet submitted a proposal for the project to the
Iowa Utilities Board for consideration, but company officials have indicated a proposal could be filed in early 2023.
This story will be updated.
