Landowners: Fight pipeline, oppose eminent domain for private enrichment
“Our Story County farmland has been in my family since 1854. My great grandfather, grandfather, and father fought to protect this land. Today I feel I must do the same.
A Texas company proposes to permanently take an easement from our land and put a crude oil pipeline through it. This pipeline would carry 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily across my land and the land of over 2,600 landowners in Iowa. The pipeline is proposed by Dakota Access, LLC, a development subsidiary of the Texas Fortune 500 Energy Transfer Partners L.P.
Dakota Access is trying to rush this land grab through before people realize what is happening. There are numerous issues to be carefully considered; not just for affected landowners, but all Iowans.
Dakota Access can’t do this without a permit from the Iowa Utilities Board. If they get it they will have the ultimate hammer of government — eminent domain — to take their easements without our consent.
Taking someone’s land by government mandate can only be justified when the project is in the public interest. Eminent domain was first used in Iowa to provide rural citizens access to electricity and telephone capability. Rural Iowans benefitted from that. It should not be used so a private company can make billions of dollars, on energy that will be neither produced nor consumed in Iowa. There should be no eminent domain for a crude oil pipeline.”
Larson, Leonard. The Des Moines Register 22 January 2015.