Lessons from Dakota Access Pipeline shape farmers' battle over proposed carbon pipelines

Farmers in the Midwest are gearing up for a fight over whether pipelines can cut through their land. Many look to the experience other farmers had with the Dakota Access Pipeline a few years ago.
Keith Puntenney is still feeling the impacts from the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through a corner of his central Iowa farmland.

Three acres of the land isn’t worth planting, Puntenney said, five years after part of the 1,200-mile pipeline was put under his land to carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. He says the soil is compacted and doesn’t get the same yields.

“They promised that they would remediate the soil,” he said. “They never did.”

Now another pipeline, this one carrying carbon dioxide, could be adjacent to another section of Puntenney’s farm.

“Déjà vu,” he said. “This is just … the same thing, different day.”