Letter to the Editor

Disappointed in Farm Bureau

To the editor:

I am disappointed and ashamed of the Iowa Farm Bureau for not supporting Iowa landowners. Farm Bureau claims to use its grassroots strength to be a voice for agriculture and rural communities. Yet, they haven’t taken a stand against the Rock Island Clean Line which is adversely affective hundreds of landowners, businesses, and families across Iowa.

Rock Island Clean Line (RICL) is a group of out of state investors that want to use eminent domain to take private agricultural property to build a proposed non-regulated, private, for-profit transmission line from northwest Iowa to Chicago and eventually to the east coast. RICL is not even a public utility. They merely want to build this transmission line that has no contracted buyers or supplier of the electricity. This is a speculative project at best and RICL wants to bully their way through private property to build this line. This will set a dangerous precedent.

I believe that a vast majority of Iowans feel that taking someone’s property in this manner is wrong. Please, Farm Bureau, stand by your claim to: “obsessively, relentlessly work for us” and fight for private rural landowner’s rights.

Kim Junker

New Hartford