HB 1184 Treats CAFO Sewer Pipes Like Phone and Power Lines, Boosts Mickelson’s Business

Speaker G. Mark Mickelson is mingling business with Legislature again. In his ongoing effort to turn every rural corner of South Dakota into concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), Mickelson has his caucus pushing House Bill 1184, a brief measure that would apply current statutes on placing phone and power lines along and across highways to sewer lines built to haul animal waste.

The lead sponsors on HB 1184 are Republicans Rep. Jason Kettwig and Sen. John Wiik from District 4, where there are CAFOs and cow poop aplenty. City boy Rep. Mickelson is a co-sponsor. Kettwig, Wiik, Mickelson, and the other Republicans on this bill seem to think that statute governing the transmission of electrons through a network serving nearly every member of the public is also appropriate for governing the transmission of foul, poisonous waste produced by handful of private parties.

Dakota Rural Action explains the absurdity of this statutory ploy:

Proponents claim that these force main manure disposal pipes are a “public utility” and should be allowed to use the public right-of-way (the road in front of your house, your ditches) to lay their above-ground manure pipes without notice or permission of affected landowners. But CAFOs are private businesses and corporations, their pipes lie above the ground, and they are a safety and environmental hazard. Proponents also say the pipes are safer and do less road damage than trucks, but there’s no leak detection mechanism other than a big plume of manure in the ditch (and waterways), in your yard, or on the road. Road damage needs to be compensated for in the permitting process–and not used as an excuse to take private property rights! [Rebecca Terk, “CAFO Proponents Want Manure Disposal Pipes Treated (But Not Regulated) Like Public Utilities,” Dakota Rural Action, 2018.02.08]

Livestock sewer lines are not power or phone lines. They are not public utilities, and they pose far greater risk to landowners forced to live with it. Break a cable, and a couple guys with a truck come and repair it while you read by candlelight. Break a livestock sewer line, and you get an environmental crew and 10,000 gallons of cow poop flooding your driveway and flower bed.

A friend who knows more about utilities than I do says that the utility companies prefer to deal with private landowners and obtain private easements outside of the right-of-way so they don’t have to deal with the state or county and move their lines whenever the roads get moved or expanded. They have the right-of-way option those occasions when a landowner just says no. CAFO owners probably encounter far more resistance from private landowners to having a dangerous, leak-prone poop pipe run across their land. Mickelson probably figures that he and his business partner Paul Kostboth could probably save their CAFO-developing clients a heck of a lot of time and money (and maybe boost their own consulting fees) if they could get legislative authority to skip dealing with finicky landowners and lay their leaky livestock sewers in the ditch.

Once again, Speaker Mickelson is using his Legislative authority to push his personal profit-making agenda. HB 1184 squeaked out of committee 7–6 on Tuesday; it is among dozens of items on Monday’s House calendar.