RAGBRAI Bike Riders Across Iowa Stop for Sno-Cones & Stickers at No CO2 Pipeline Awareness Watering Station
Earling & Guthrie Center, IA – Landowners with the Iowa Easement Team landowners’ legal co-op, and grassroots advocates opposed to risky carbon pipelines and the use of eminent domain to seize private property to build them, hosted an informational rest stop this week for the more than 20,000 bike riders on the 391-mile annual “RAGBRAI” bike ride across Iowa.
With temperatures in the 90’s, the “No CO2 Pipeline Awareness Watering Station” featured a very popular sno-cone giveaway that handed out 500 icy treats, along with custom bike helmet stickers that read, “Cyclists Against CO2 Pipelines.” A series of huge 12 by 8 signs at the rest stop read: “From Fertile Fields to Stolen Land. For Our Rights, We’ll Take a Stand. No Summit Carbon Pipeline!” and “Carbon Pipelines Are a Dirty Game. Taking What’s Ours With No Shame. No Eminent Domain!”
Another flock of yard signs greeted riders with a series of messages:
“You Came to See Our Countryside / Thanks for Taking This Little Ride / Help Keep Iowa Farms Alive / Oppose the Summit Pipeline”
“The View is Grand / The Corn is Fine / Please Don’t Add a Forced Pipeline / Thanks for Stopping Through Our Town / Don’t Let Our Rights Fall Down / Talk to Candidates Every Day / Don’t Give Our Property Rights Away”
Volunteer landowners operating the rest stop had conversations with folks from Florida to Alaska – and multiple people remembered our No CO2 Pipeline watering stations at previous years’ rides.
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“RAGBRAI is so unique in that cyclists from all over the world gather to ride across our beautiful state. We had riders from all across the country stop and talk about property rights and eminent domain abuse. It’s a universal problem and there is a renewed awareness,” said Sherri Webb, Shelby County impacted landowner.
“While on the surface, RAGBRAI and opposing a risky CO2 pipeline may not have much in common, at the root of it, there are strong similarities. Both are about appreciating Iowa’s landscape and the traditions it holds. Thousands of riders will spend this week pedaling past farms that families have protected for generations, the same farms landowners are now fighting to keep out of a pipeline company's path. We're all persevering, we're all fighting hard, and we're all doing it because this land is worth it,” said Emma Schmit, Pipeline Fighters’ Organizing Director for Bold Alliance.
Bold’s Easement Teams in Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota have also been organizing landowner opposition to the Summit CO2 pipeline for years. Bold’s Easement Teams are helping fund attorneys who have represented landowners at agency hearings that resulted in pipeline permit rejections in North Dakota and South Dakota, and the most-contested project in the history at the Iowa Utilities Commission, where landowners with the Iowa Easement Team also continue to challenge Summit’s pipeline route approval in the courts.
