Appropriations bill could derail Rock Island Clean Line

DES MOINES- A recently enacted appropriations bill could effectively squash any remaining hope for the construction and operation of the Rock Island Clean Line by restricting the use of eminent domain on aboveground merchant line projects.
           
“It’s huge. It pretty much puts the nail in their coffin,” said Kim Junker, an anti-RICL activist from the Dike area. “It’s a huge win for us to have legislators on our side and have Governor Branstad sign this bill.”
           
Senate File 517, signed into law on May 12—just 12 days before former Governor Terry Branstad left office to accept his current position as the U.S. Ambassador to China—is a 24 page appropriation bill that includes a passage amending section 6A.21 of the Iowa Code, reclassifying aboveground merchant lines (which the RICL would fall into) under “private development purposes” and effectively banning the condemnation of agricultural land for such endeavors.
           
The RICL, a 500-mile wind energy transmission line which was first proposed in 2013 and would have run through areas near Dike and Reinbeck on its way to Chicago, has been particularly controversial and unpopular in Grundy County: of the 163 landowners who would be affected, just nine signed voluntary easements. Many complained that the route, purported to be the shortest possible one, cut through the middle of cornfields rather than along fencerows. 
 
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