March 28, 2024

Bakken pipeline brings outdated energy into Iowa’s future

The Iowa Utilities Board will begin hearing public comments Nov. 12 at the Boone County Fairgrounds in the final public process to determine if Dakota Access, LLC will be allowed the use of eminent domain to build a 343.43-mile crude oil pipeline through 18 Iowa counties. If approved, it would be one segment of a larger 1,134-mile pipeline extending from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to a hub and refineries in Patoka, Ill.

To date, Dakota Access and its Texas-based parent company Energy Transfer Partners have received voluntary easements from roughly 40 percent of Iowa landowners who would be affected by the pipeline’s construction — although Dakota Access claims the number is closer to 60 percent.

IUB’s three members need to determine if it’s good for Iowa to require 40 to 60 percent of the farmers and landowners along the pipeline route to concede their land to Dakota Access with only a few temporary jobs and a small amount of property tax revenue at stake while not receiving the benefit of the power generated from the oil.

Iowa already has well documented and highly debated water quality issues from farm nitrate runoff. Do Iowa citizens want to risk the potential environmental devastation of an oil spill?

During a mandatory county-level public hearing last year in Newton, representatives from ETP detailed security measures that would be built in to the pipeline to mitigate a leak. A 24-hour monitoring center will be able to detect small pressure changes in the pipeline — which is slated to carry 570,00 barrels of oil per day — indicating a possible leak. The State of Iowa mandates an emergency responder be within a 60 minute drive of any point of the pipeline. When crude oil is leaking into ground water and running through Iowa’s extensive agricultural drainage tile system, one hour is just too long.

Leaks do happen. In 2010, the Enbridge oil spill near Kalamazoo, Mich. dumped 843,000 gallons of crude oil into Talmadge Creek only 35 miles from the Kalamazoo River — a main source of drinking water for the surrounding cities. In 2014 the U.S. DOT Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reported 305 significant incidents — spills which caused hospitalization or death — involving the shipment of crude oil by pipeline. These spills also produced almost $297 million in property damage.

ETP would be required to compensate farmers for spills, but a reimbursement given to landowners could never amount to a lifetime of crop production. Following a leak, the affected land could be unfarmable for decades, and the money might not be available right away.

In a June 25 article exploring the proposed use of eminent domain in the pipeline project, the Newton Daily News found that ETP conceded in a 2013 report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that the company may not have the liquid capital to clean up an extensive spill.

In a subsection of the report on pages 44-45 the company reported, “We may incur substantial environmental costs and liabilities because of the underlying risk inherent to our operations. Although we have established financial reserves for our estimated environmental remediation liabilities, additional contamination or conditions may be discovered, resulting in increased remediation costs, liabilities for natural resource damages that could substantially increase our costs for site remediation projects. Accordingly, we cannot assure you that our current reserves are adequate to cover all future liabilities, even for currently known contamination.”

Even if environmental issues with crude oil pipelines were infrequent, the possibility ETP might not have the financial wherewithal to fund the cleanup of a spill in Iowa is just too great of a risk. Iowa Code only requires $250,000 of liability insurance for hazardous liquid pipelines projects. This could put state and federal taxpayers on the hook for initial clean-up costs, and take federal negotiators and potentially court systems years to recoup that money.

Dakota Access has estimated 2,000 to 4,000 temporary jobs will be created by the project, but independent economists have said that number is inflated. The number of one to two-year jobs does not compare to the steady employment renewables have brought to the region. Newton has become a hub for a growing wind energy industry in Iowa. The state currently generates nearly 30 percent of its power from wind, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, and wind energy manufacturing jobs employ approximately 1,000 workers in Jasper County alone.

Supporting an aging form of energy that will be in direct competition with a growing Iowa-based industry and a growing employer is not in the best interest of the state. The energy derived from wind also produces no greenhouse gas emissions, while the energy taken from burning Bakken crude will contribute to the growing problem of climate change.

Many industry analysts, state and federal lawmakers and regular Iowans will be watching the IUB proceedings and weighing heavily on their ultimate decision. Oil use is not going away overnight and safe transport from existing wells is important — but 50 years of pumping more crude oil underneath America’s breadbasket is just too big of a risk for Iowa and the country.