One Iowa Senator is hoping that a bill will make its way to the governor’s desk by the end of this legislative session.

Eminent domain, which is a process in that a governmental or private company can forcibly take easements from landowners for projects. Summit Carbon Solutions is one of three private companies looking to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol plants and transport it through an underground pipeline to an underground storage facility in North Dakota. District 24 Senator Jesse Green (R-Boone) says the Senate bill died during funnel week, where bills that didn’t get through a committee were effectively “dead” for the rest of session, but a House bill remains alive. 

Green tells Raccoon Valley Radio the House bill has set a threshold of 90-percent voluntary easements before a company can be granted eminent domain. He believes it’s reasonable to set the threshold at two-thirds majority of voluntary easements showing the public will for eminent domain to be used, but one hang up is showing the public good.

“The ethanol industry will be drastically impacted by this project because of federal money. That’s a whole separate argument, whether or not the federal government should be spending as much money as they are on this. But nevertheless they made these investments and so now the market is responding. This has huge impacts on Louis Dreyfus, and Poet, and some of these ethanol plants in our area.”

Green is hoping the House will send its bill over to the Senate so they can consider it wants to get something signed into law because Iowans are demanding something happens in the legislature.