A Sioux County dairy farmer says she received little direction from state regulators about how to prepare for a hearing on Tuesday that might determine whether she will be forced to allow a carbon dioxide pipeline to be built across her 80 acres.

“All I got was a set of questions that they’re going to ask me,” said Nelva Huitink, who with her husband has about 90 dairy cows north of Orange City.

Huitink is among three people who are set to testify on the first day of Summit Carbon Solutions’ evidentiary hearing with the Iowa Utilities Board — the culmination of a two-year process that will decide whether the company gets permission to build the pipeline system and use eminent domain to do so. The system would span more than 680 miles in Iowa.

The IUB took the unusual step to weigh many of the company’s eminent domain requests at the start of its evidentiary hearing. That is meant to allow farmers who have not signed voluntary easements with the company and are subject to the requests to participate before harvest begins.

The peak harvest of corn and soybeans typically occurs in October, which is more than a month away, but the hearing could go for months.

To consider eminent domain requests early in the proceedings breaks with longstanding board precedent to discuss eminent domain toward the end of the hearing — after the details of the projects are discussed.

Huitink said she has kept abreast of Summit’s project by examining the documents in its electronic IUB docket.

How the hearing will be conducted this week is unclear. The Iowa Capital Dispatch sought a general overview of the first day of the hearing from an IUB spokesperson who pointed to the board’s “weekly digest” online. That only shows a list of landowners or their representatives who will testify about the eminent domain requests on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The hearing starts Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Cardiff Event Center in Fort Dodge. Huitink is listed as the third witness, but there is no time estimate for when her testimony might start. She was told it would likely be that afternoon.

“I have a two-and-a-half to three-hour drive to get to Fort Dodge, so I asked, ‘What if I’m late?’” Huitink said. “And they were like, ‘Well, we can’t guarantee that we’ll get you in if you’re not there when we call your name.’”

Summit proposes to connect its pipeline to more than 30 ethanol plants in five states to transport their captured carbon dioxide to North Dakota for underground sequestration.

Federal officials have said such projects are crucial to meeting goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but environmental groups have opposed Summit’s project because it might elongate the use of ethanol as a fuel and delay a transition to electric vehicles.

The ethanol industry is a key market for Iowa corn — more than half of it is used to produce ethanol.

Ethanol proponents pipeline proposals in Iowa by Summit and two other companies are critical to the industry’s future and would generate significant new revenue for the industry.

That’s because there are substantial federal tax credits available for ethanol plants that capture and sequester their carbon dioxide or that produce low-carbon fuels. The producers could also sell their fuels in more markets.

A study commissioned by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association concluded that the producers could more than triple their profits with projects like Summit’s. The company has forged profit-sharing agreements with the facilities, and the terms of those agreements were recently made available to attorneys for the Sierra Club of Iowa and the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation.

The company’s evidentiary hearing will be held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays until it concludes, said Jess Mazour, of the Sierra Club of Iowa, who attended a pre-hearing meeting on Monday in Fort Dodge that was closed to the public. She said the IUB gave no more details of the scheduling.

Huitink, the dairy farmer, said the list of questions the IUB provided her ask about her land’s legal description, whether it has other easements, how a Summit easement would affect her and whether there are outstanding issues that haven’t been resolved.

She said Summit offered her about $100,000 for easements on her two parcels.

“I don’t want the money,” she said.

The Dakota Access oil pipeline also runs through her property, and that alone has affected her family’s ability to expand its dairy operation. Her son has considered building a new facility with automated milking capabilities, and adding Summit’s pipeline would make that improbable, Huitink said.

Opponents of the project have sought a delay from the board and from a district court judge because of pending disputes over evidence, the IUB’s jurisdiction over the project, and North Dakota’s recent denial of a permit to Summit.

The company says it has obtained voluntary easements from landowners for about 75% of its route in Iowa.

“This overwhelming level of support is a clear reflection that they believe like we do that our project will ensure the long-term viability of the ethanol industry, strengthen the agricultural marketplace for farmers, and generate tens of millions of dollars in new revenue for local communities across the Midwest,” the company said Monday.

The evidentiary hearing will be broadcast online.