Mont Co BOS – Summit on Agenda -Public Comments 9/30/25

Good Morning, I’m Jan Norris from West Township. Summit is a business with their own priorities and are here to persuade support for their project. They are asking for sweeping changes to the IUC “Final Order” that allows them to build a pipeline to nowhere. The route, the destination, and use of the CO2 would be stricken from the conditional permit, but are not addressing the significant concerns of landowners. 

This project is still trying to:

• Obtain eminent domain to seize what landowners won’t sign over

• Use federal tax dollars to fund their private project 

• Damage Iowa farmland while using OUR water AND energy

• And Still place a hazardous pipeline dangerously near our homes 

The financial incentives they are offering to landowners and the county will not even begin to compensate for the risk and potential future costs. These actions are a little sugar on a bitter pill.

Legal professionals recognize recent actions as bizarre and uncustomary. In the last 2 weeks Summit has:

• Filed a motion to amend the permit

• Asked the District Court to remand the case back to the IUC instead of hearing oral arguments on the appeal

• And yesterday, they filed a motion to consolidate the 16 separate dockets into one project after objecting to the same just last year

Do they even have a plan? They don’t have a route. The changes they are requesting are more than significant and could indicate they know the project is in trouble. In a recent Successful Farming article, a South Dakota lobbyist hinted that the pipeline proposal is on life support.1  Perhaps these actions in Iowa are a Hail Mary pass at the end of a losing game. Does this sound like a company we should put our full faith in?

All the while, no one is looking out for US- the landowners and residents. Folks with the misfortune of having this proposal in their backyards or across their property are being strung along like they are inconsequential – unable to plan their businesses or  lives while Summit desperately tries to figure out how to get a share of the CO2 goldrush. 

 I urge our supervisors and the people of Montgomery County and the state of Iowa to see through the mirage. 

https://www.agriculture.com/partners-opposition-to-summit-pipeline-fueled-by-horseshoe-politics-on-left-and-right-panelists-say-11819209