When Andy Alexander moved into his grandparents’ farmhouse a few years ago, he knew he was moving in next to the Dakota Access oil pipeline. It chugs away about one-eighth of a mile from his doorstep under rows of corn ripening from green to gold.
Then he learned another pipeline could go right next to it.
“They’re proposing that they put a carbon dioxide pipeline running parallel to the oil pipeline that’s currently here,” Alexander said.
The current route of a 1,300-mile pipeline proposed by Navigator CO2 Ventures cuts right between Alexander’s house and the small town of Fremont, Iowa.
An oil spill would be an environmental disaster, Alexander said, but he is actually more afraid of a release of carbon dioxide. He imagines an invisible cloud of CO2 drifting close to the ground, displacing oxygen along the way.