The legislative session at the Indiana Statehouse reached the halfway point last week. Bills that passed the House now move to the Senate and vice versa. Indiana Farm Bureau has been following many pieces of legislation throughout the process, including one that just won’t seem to go away.“We’re still working to defeat Senate Bill 451, which is the carbon sequestration pilot bill,” says Jeff Cummins, director of state government relations for INFB. “So, that bill moved from the Senate and will go now to the House.”
We’ve discussed this issue a number of times before on Hoosier Ag Today. A very similar bill was defeated last year with the help of Indiana Farm Bureau and its members.
Cummins says this is a landowners’ rights issue where a West Terre Haute company wants to manufacture hydrogen and ammonia and use your subsurface property to store the carbon.
“Wabash Valley Resources over in West Terre Haute merely has to make each landowner a $250 one-time payment per acre to store their co2 in that landowners’ pore space in the subsurface. And if the landowner doesn’t like that they have to seek mediation or file a lawsuit. Those provisions then result in the price being lower, we think, because it’ll be tied to the storage of natural gas.”
Cummins reminds us this same story played out a year ago when that bill passed the Senate. He’s hoping for the same happy ending this time around where it once again gets struck down in the House. He says that’s the part where you come in.
“We need all hands on deck. We’ll be doing an action alert, so for your listeners who are members and get those, watch your inboxes for an action alert. And of course, we’d love them to come to the statehouse if they can make the time to really help us make the case to members of the House why this bill is bad public policy and frankly just doesn’t even need to be passed in order for them to operate. They could go and negotiate with landowners today. Their EPA permit is not contingent upon this bill. It’s just a problem.”
Senate Bill 451 has been referred to the House Committee on Environmental Affairs.
Hear much more on this bill and others being monitored by Indiana Farm Bureau in my full interview with Cummins below.
