(Radio Iowa) – House Speaker Pat Grassley says he’s disappointed the Iowa Senate did not debate a House bill that would have prohibited carbon pipeline developers from using the government’s eminent domain authority to seize property from landowners who do not want the pipeline running through their property. This was year five of the stand-off between a majority of Republicans in the House and in the Senate on the issue.
“I’ve heard from conversations with people that think maybe doing nothing is better than doing a marginal compromise,” Grassley said. “There’s a lot of different opinions on this topic. Ultimately what I can say is we do need to have more protections, whether the project moves forward this fall, whether it ends up in court.” Grassley says the legislature did act to set important guidelines for companies looking for pools of hydrogen deep underground — and extracting what’s found.
“We took a few of our lessons that we learned in the conversation about pipelines and applied them to hydrogen…which is saying if you want to survey someone’s land, you have to have their permission. That’s been a big sticking point in any property rights fight we’ve had over the last several years. And also that if you decline to be a part of a project that you’ve declined to be a part of the project and you don’t need to continue to be bothered by it,” Grassley said. “Now that doesn’t mean a new company couldn’t come. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t reach out.”
Grassley made his comments during a weekend appearance on Iowa Press on Iowa P-B-S.
