On June 25, the Iowa Utilities Board approved Summit Carbon Solutions LLC’s use of eminent domain to place liquid carbon dioxide pipelines in Iowa, including Bremer and Butler counties. While I question a private company exploiting Iowa’s eminent domain law in a bid for profits, equally concerning is that Summit’s pipelines will require in excess of half a billion gallons of groundwater per year to cool the carbon dioxide for transport.
Our groundwater reserves are located in either confined or unconfined aquifers. Unconfined aquifers, such as found under the karst topography of Northeast Iowa, can recharge quickly by rainfall and snowmelt. This quick recharge is both good and bad, as such aquifers are sensitive accumulators of surface contaminants, such as that from agricultural runoff. This is especially concerning because approximately 40% of Iowans get their drinking water from this type of aquifer.
Confined aquifers are usually deeper and covered by a solid barrier, like bedrock, and recharge slowly and variably, sometimes requiring centuries or more to replenish. We don’t know how much water exists in our confined aquifers, but we do know the water in some of them is thousands to millions of years old and not limitless.
What is clear is that Iowa’s groundwater levels depend on a dynamic balance of how fast they recharge from surface water and how much water we use. Dramatic climate shifts involving cycles of drought and excessive rain have seen our water tables fall and rise, making this balance hard to predict and manage. This makes understanding the reserve volume of older confined aquifer systems, like the Jordan aquifer, so important.
Iowa’s last ground water plan was created in 1985. Iowa must make creating a new comprehensive groundwater plan a priority. The Iowa Legislature recently allocated $250,000 to help understand how much water lies in shallow water supplies above our bedrock confinements. This is a start; the Iowa Geological Survey agency needs more resources to credibly estimate how much ancient water our deeper aquifers hold. Once that is done, we can create a more sustainable groundwater plan to balance the rate of shallow aquifer recharge, existing deep-water supplies, groundwater discharge, and contamination inflow.
In the meantime, Summit is expected to apply for more water permits to draw from our deeper, harder to replenish aquifers. New ethanol production facilities are also in the works for the proposed pipeline. This will further tap our water supply, as our ethanol industry currently consumes up to 13.5 billion gallons of groundwater per year to make ethanol. Without question, the apparently imminent landscape of liquid carbon dioxide pipelines running over our land, attached to ethanol production facilities, will include deep well access that will consume Iowa’s precious water supplies.
For the benefit of Iowa’s future, the DNR should take a conservative, cautionary approach and limit water access permits to industries like Summit until we can get an updated manageable groundwater plan in place for the state of Iowa.
Dr. Shawn Ellerbroek
House District 57 Candidate
