Summit Carbon Solutions of Summit Ag has sent me and my husband a certified letter to tell us of their intentions to take part of our farm to build a carbon capture pipeline. 706 miles of land is sought in Iowa. Their website claims, “Summit Carbon Solutions will construct an underground pipeline system across five states, including North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota …After the CO2 is captured from ethanol plants, compressed CO2 is transported through pipelines. It then arrives at the injection site in North Dakota and is injected approximately a mile below ground. Finally, CO2 is stored in highly researched geologic formations, where it will remain safely underground for millions of years.”
Our federal government has issued more tax credits (section 45Q of the Internal Revenue Code) for this plan to put the cost of it back on the people. What is a tax credit? A tax credit is a way to not have to pay taxes. When these big companies don’t pay taxes, it is American citizens that foot the bill. There is no free, cheap infrastructure. Warren Buffett said about industrial wind, “I will do anything that is basically covered by the law to reduce Berkshire’s tax rate,” “For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”
Eventually all this spending will make our money worthless. It will break the middle class, the only people that can pool their resources to challenge the wealthy elite. There are a whole bunch of plans to mine our tax money for revenue and the excuse is Climate Change. When using that as an excuse then any action against humans is justified.
Summit Carbon Solutions will want the right of eminent domain. They will say that because of Climate Change that their business model is for public use. When one paints with that wide of a brush then no one’s property is off limits for anything. No one has rights.
In 2013 we received another certified letter when the Rock Island “Clean” Line tried to take our land for a 500-mile wind energy power line. Landowners across the state fought it. Two years after stating their intent “Clean” Line Energy Partners had 177 voluntary easements out of 1540 easements they sought in Iowa. “Clean” Line never built any of the 3000 miles of power lines they proposed.
Landowners will not let you take their land for this pipeline by eminent domain. The government has NO RIGHT to take our land for their own climate delusions or for the fattening of large corporations.
United States citizens have rights the government has sought to erode through the passing of unlawful, un-Constitutional policy. Summit Carbon Solutions, if you want to buy the rights to people’s land for your pipeline you have that right to try and they have the right to grant you permission. If you do not win their permission, they have rights to defend their property, rights granted to them at the foundation of the United States.
The government ONLY exists to secure the rights of the people. When the government becomes tyrannical, we have the right to defend ourselves and secure our property.
If Summit Carbon Solutions changes its path to avoid our own property, we will stand for the rights of neighbors near or far who request our help.
“The LORD has driven out great and powerful nations before you, and to this day no one can stand against you. One of you can put a thousand to flight, because the LORD your God fights for you, just as He promised.” Joshua 23:9-10
Author: Janna Swanson
Janna Swanson helps her husband Paul farm in NW Iowa with their two young daughters. Since 2013 Janna has volunteered her time and energy for her community. She was a key member of the Preservation of Rural Iowa Alliance that protected landowners from the Rock Island Clean Line. From there she helped start and facilitated the grassroots group, The Coalition for Rural Property Rights to help protect community members from industrial wind installations. She is also a board member of National Wind Watch, a 25-year online collection of information of the industrial wind opposition from around the world. Most importantly Janna is a follower of Christ and seeks to help others to know and understand Him. Yet because she is also seeking deepening her own knowledge and understanding she welcomes critical, constructive debate. No one has the corner on truth, we all see “through a glass, darkly”. (I Corinthians 13:12)
