(Guthrie Center, IA) The Guthrie County Board of Supervisors met today and invited the public to join them to discuss concerns about the Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline. The Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline will partner with 57 ethanol plants across Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. The idea is to capture carbon dioxide from the fermentation process of ethanol plants and send it to North Dakota via underground pipelines, where it will be stored permanently and safely according to Summit Carbon Solutions.
People of the public shared their thoughts on the topic and were not happy with the plans. Supervisor Brian Johnson said there isn’t much the Board of Supervisors can do.
The original plan for Summit Carbon Solutions was install a network of 690 miles of pipe, however when another company abandoned plans for a similar project, Summit Carbon Solutions proposed an expansion of another 340 miles in the state. The expansion includes POET Bioprocessing in Menlo, located in Guthrie County.
Iowa State Senator Jesse Green attended the meeting to explain how the pipeline works in terms of the Iowa Utilities Commission granting permission to Summit Carbon Solutions.
Despite the Iowa Utilities Commission, Summit Carbon Solutions will not begin the project as they wait for approval from North and South Dakota. Without approval from those two state legislatures, the project would be halted, and would not happen in the state of Iowa.
A public meeting for the expansion is scheduled and will take place in Guthrie County on August 27 at 6 p.m. at the Guthrie County Activity Center, located at 209 State Street in Guthrie Center.
