South Dakota landowners threatened with eminent domain by carbon dioxide pipeliner Summit Carbon Solutions are finding a sympathetic if somewhat awkward ear in the radical right-wing press. The generally loathsome Epoch Times sent a reporter to South Dakota to take quotes and pictures on the farm of good Spink County Democrat Ed Fischbach, who is leading the fight against the Iowa company’s plan to seize land without permission for its project.
Since the July 2021 letter, Summit Carbon has filed more than 81 eminent domain lawsuits in 10 South Dakota counties against farmers who refuse to voluntarily sign easement agreements with the company.
“They’re trying to intimidate people,” Fischbach said. “They’re doing this with no permit. That’s what’s upsetting.”
“We have a trespass law in this state. It doesn’t mean anything because they’re out surveying people. The company has armed security guards on your property to keep you away from the surveyors. We’ve got pictures of them. They’re bringing this in without authorization” [Allan Stein, “Farmers Band Together Against CO2 Pipeline Project in South Dakota,” The Epoch Times, 2023.06.15].
Fischbach remains keenly engaged in this fight for landowner rights even though, as he tells Stein, Summit Carbon Solutions recently revised its route to avoid Fischbach’s land:
Fischbach said the company recently moved the pipeline off his property and onto his neighbors’ without notice or explanation.
“The fact that they moved the pipeline off me—I don’t appreciate that,” he said. “They never asked me. They moved onto some of my neighbors and upset them. If I don’t want something on my property, I wouldn’t want it on my neighbor either.”
The fourth-generation farmer said some farmers—offered hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell the right of way—just said “no.”
…“We don’t have a price. We don’t sell our soul to anybody. I’ll go to my grave fighting this,” Fischbach said. [Stein, 2023.06.15].
Fischbach says his grassroots opposition is getting no support from the big Republican powers that be:
“Once they get that easement, nothing is stopping them. They’ve got the politicians—all the governors in these states are all on board with them. They’ve got our federal people who are on board or won’t touch it.”
“Our governor won’t even meet and talk about this” [Stein, 2023.06.15].
Uncomfortable with following up on that point, The Epoch Times gets some quotes from right-wing legislators like Aberdeen Reps. Carl Perry and Brandi Schaefbauer supporting the farmers:
South Dakota Rep. Carl Perry (R) said he is “100 percent in favor of ending the erosion of property rights” by companies like Summit Carbon and Navigator that exploit loopholes in eminent domain laws.
“It should not be for private gain—period,” Perry told The Epoch Times. “We need to take care of our people. If they can do this to my farm, what if they come to my house?”
Perry said he supported HB1133, which passed in the House by a 70 percent margin, losing in a 9-0 vote in the Senate committee.
“It was what we call a stacked committee. It was already decided even before they had the meeting,” Perry said. “Our farmers feed the world. We’re in trouble if we don’t care for our farmers.”
South Dakota Rep. Brandei Schaefbauer (R) said the central issue is “not about the pipeline; it’s about property rights.”
“It’s not just farmland; it’s anything you own,” Schaefbauer told The Epoch Times. “It’s happening [in Brown County] because a judge said you can go on land without interference.”
“When the word gets out, and the truth is out in the media, people start saying wait for a second. I had no idea this was going on,” she said [Stein, 2023.06.15].
…but Stein seeks no comment from South Dakota’s Republican Congressional delegation, nor does he seek a response from Governor Kristi Noem to confirm or deny Fischbach’s claim that the Republican Governor won’t even meet with the farmers whose land Summit Carbon Solutions wants to seize. Stein instead gives ink to a climate change-denying lobbyist from Virginia who said in Aberdeen last week that the carbon pipelines are part of a “diabolical” liberal (oops—that’s redundant!) campaign against liberty:
On June 10, more than 100 South Dakota farmers gathered at City Lights in Aberdeen to show solidarity against the pipeline. The keynote speaker was Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, a nonprofit free enterprise action group based in Virginia.
…DeWeese characterized globalist environmental initiatives like United Nations Agendas 21 and 30 as a “diabolical force unlike any other in history.”
He said it involves the voluntary surrender of liberty, enshrined in personal property rights, using fear of an environmental catastrophe as a weapon to sway people. He described the global green agenda as a “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.”
…DeWeese said the term “sustainable” is a trigger word for getting people to surrender liberty voluntarily as part of an action plan to “inventory and control all resources and people, enforced with fear of climate change.”
…DeWeese added no evidence supports claims of manmade climate change or that CO2 is dangerous to the environment.
“There is no consensus of scientists [false]. Rising sea levels drown no islands [false]. The poles are not melting [false]. Polar bears are not drowning. The numbers are climbing [false],” he said.
At 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, DeWeese said the planet is “on the verge of CO2 starvation” [horsehockey] holding up a U.S. Navy data sheet for the audience.
He said at least 1,600 ppm of carbon dioxide is required for trees and plants to thrive [more horsehockey].
“Let me tell you something. If you have no carbon footprint, you are dead. This idiotic scheme ignores biological science. Trees and plants need CO2 to live” [Stein, 2023.06.15].
Climate change is far more real than Kristi Noem and other leading Republicans’ commitment to property rights. The Epoch Times, like Rep. Jon Hansen, is afraid to say that, but other right-wing outlets are picking up on Governor Noem’s absence from this fight. Landowner Jared Bossly went on pillow vendor Mike Lindell’s Frank Speech and said Governor Noem told him she won’t lift a finger to defend his Freedom:
Speaking to LindellTV’s Brannon Howse, South Dakota farmer Jared Bossly who’s one of 80+ landowners in the state facing a lawsuit over the carbon capture pipeline said he’s reached out to the state’s Republican governor for help to no avail.
“Our governor ran on property rights. That was the number one bullet point on her campaign page,” Bossly said, adding, “She’s completely silent. She won’t say a word about it. She says it’s outta her hands. It’s in the PUC’s [Public Utilities Commission’s] hands.”
“And I said, ‘But you’re the elected gov of South Dakota. There has to be something you can do.’ And she just told me, ‘Am I supposed to fight all your battles?’” [Adam Salazar, “South Dakota Farmer Fights Eminent Domain Lawsuit over Carbon Capture Pipeline,” NewsWars, 2023.06.08]
Bossly says this fruitless conversation with Noem took place last August at DakotaFest in Mitchell.
And why would Noem fight this battle for farmers’ land rights? Those farmers didn’t buy top-tier sponsorship of her second inauguration the way Summit Carbon Solutions did. Those farmers aren’t paying her son-in-law Kyle Peters to lobby for them the way Gevo Inc. did during the 2023 Legislative Session.
Gevo is the monster bio-jet-fuel plant going up in Lake Preston that Governor Noem has touted as an emblem of her Openness for Business. Gevo got $187 million in state financing last month on top of nearly $19 million in tax breaks last December for its billion-dollar project. Peters has been working with A-1 Development for over a year to promote the Gevo project. And last February, Gevo contracted with Summit Carbon Solutions to remove the fuel plant’s carbon emissions.
The Epoch Times reporter who flew all the way to South Dakota somehow didn’t find room in his lengthy and deep report on Summit Carbon Solutions to mention Governor Kristi Noem’s hypocritical refusal to defend landowners from eminent domain and her personal and pecuniary interest in the pipeline’s completion. But other leading lights of the right-wingerazzi, like South Dakota export Tomi Lahren, are catching on to the Republiscam. Lahren interviews Bossly and tries to blame liberal environmentalists for not leaping to Bossly’s aid (and yes, we folks somewhat left of Lahren ought to be hollering about protecting land rights here as much as much as we did against the Dakota Access pipeline, and Dakota Rural Action is most definitely doing so), but she also ramblingly knocks “South Dakota hack Governor” Kristi Noem for not living up to her reputation among out-of-state folks as a “red-state warrior”:
Governor Kristi Noem has a long history of this. We know that she cares about ranchers and farmers as long as they have the last name Noem or they’re related to her. She certainly cares about those people and she’ll take money to make sure that those people are O.K., but when it comes to actual farmers and ranchers—a number of winter storms that have come through and really hurt the farmers and the ranchers in the state of South Dakota—she’s also been largely silent when they shut down Keystone XL pipeline unless you could get a headline or get on Fox News to discuss it she really didn’t care about that one, either, so I am like you, I am sick and tired of these politicians from South Dakota just running roughshod because they think they can get away with it because they really domineer over a small state. So I promise you this, Jared: I will be hot on her tail making sure that she is held accountable for this and everything else [Tomi Lahren, comment during interview with Jared Bossly, on Tomi Lahren Is Fearless, 2023.06.15, timestamp 26:58; transcribed from YouTube by CAH/DFP].
Keystone XL—oh yeah! another project where an outside corporation threatened to take South Dakotans property by eminent domain for private gain and sponsored Governor Kristi Noem’s inauguration to remind her that Freedom is for big businesses, not South Dakota landowners. Notice how Lahren struggles to get that story straight… but such is the confusion that arises when a case like the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline presents itself, with Democrats like Ed Fischbach rallying conservative farmers like Jared Bossly to fight interestingly conflicted Kristi Noem’s corporate Republican friends Bruce Rastetter and Dan Lederman who are trying to violate South Dakotans’ land rights to make a quick buck off federal subsidies for a dubious response to climate change.
That complicated scenario doesn’t exactly fit the lazy paradigms of the Epoch Times/Tomi Lahren rage-o-rama, but hey, at least they are trying. Keep telling your stories, Ed and Jared! Maybe you can get the conservative media to get the story right and finally challenge the Republican powers that be that are pursuing this land grab.
ETSI coal slurry pipeline was the start of all of this land and water grab. They all need to suffer the same fate.
Well, so far North Dakota is doing a pretty good job repelling the land rapers pitting presidential hopeful Governor Doug Burgum against Veep wannabe Mrs. Noem. Instead of burning that subsidized corn maybe we should be popping some then just watch the show!
Since the Mandan Line fight, I’ve never seen farmers in the James River area so united and angry. Yet, it’s mind boggling that they’ve been so wrong about who their enemies are. For more than a year, the message has been coming through very clearly that the Republican machine in South Dakota is four-square against them. Democrats nominated a great candidate for the S.D. Public Utilities Commission with Jeff Barth, a Minnehaha County Commissioner with actual utilities experience and a track record of opposing big money interests running over regular folks. Instead, these landowners supported the spineless Chris Nelson who fed them lies about the PUC’s role in eminent domain. They only succeeded in validating the corporate thieves.
It’s also exasperating to see these landowners hold a rally to listen to professional liar Tom DeWeese prop up that old John Birch pack of lies about so-called “Agenda 21.” DeWeese got these goofballs to run down his phony conspiracy rabbit holes and waste their time and energy instead of nailing the real culprits in Pierre and the South Dakota Republican Party. DeWeese will have them chasing their tails over climate change, and the real issue of corporate theft will continue unfettered by any organized and coherent opposition.
I’d like to be more sympathetic with the landowners and I oppose the CO2 pipeline as a sham to greenwash greedy polluters. They’ve wasted their opportunities to strike back at those who are screwing them over. Now it’s too late. Kristi Noep and her pals are rightfully playing them for suckers.
Yeah, these national media flaks, even Lahren who should know better if she really understood South Dakota history, don’t understand that over 5 decades it has been a fight of various monied interests running roughshod over South Dakota landowners and the environment. Progressives and conservative South Dakotans united on many of these issues to fight them. In most cases they are fighting against the corrupt insider politicians (Republicans mostly because they have controlled the state for so long, but also Democrats) who sell out South Dakota to those outside interests. Most of the national conservative think tanks and political operators, or course, are bought and paid for by the outside money so they always end up supporting these interests against landowners and the environment South Dakotans have to live in after they’ve dumped their particular garbage projects in the state. Whether it was the Oahe Irrigation Project or uranium mining, or ETSI, or the sewage ash scam or gold mining or the mega-landfills or pipelines and transmission lines of every sort, it was progressives and conservatives, landowners and environmentalists who stood up together against the outside interests.
The name Fishbach, for instance, was prominent in the Oahe Irrigation fight in the 1970s, but I suspect that Epoch Times author didn’t know that as he was writing his rather interesting but very skewed story. Whether the Fishbach leading the opposition to this CO2 pipeline is related to the Untied Family Farmers’ Fishbach would be of interest to anyone who knew that history of that fight years ago. UFF was the example of grassroots organizing on a non-partisan basis that showed the way for all the victories South Dakotans had over outside interests.
Lahren may be from South Dakota, but she has to curry favor with the people who pay her bills, so she’s still focused on continuing to pound out lies about the Keystone XL pipeline, rather than fighting the CO2 pipeline. Hey, the Keystone people used the same goon tactics that the CO2 folks are using. These people don’t want anyone to understand that conservatives and progressives when they unite have beat a lot of these projects over the years over politicians who might be inclined to sell out the state. The sad thing is these fake conservatives, like Lahren, would rather spew lies and collect a paycheck, than actually do anything productive to stop the CO2 pipeline.
Don’t forget magats are responsible for this decision, too….
https://lailluminator.com/2023/06/16/half-the-nations-wetlands-just-lost-federal-protection-their-fate-is-up-to-states/
And let’s not forget that the tribes and various Indian groups over the years have been the most consistent allies, and often the tip of the spear, on many of these issues.
The Corps of Engineers, USFWS and Bureau of Reclamation have been largely silent on all the water crossings. With the defeat of clean water protections navigable streams will be at risk to a riparian holocaust.
Forgot the link!
https://southdakotasearchlight.com/2023/06/18/supreme-court-wetlands-decision-has-sd-water-advocates-worried/
Epoch Times. That says about all one needs to know. And “polar bear numbers are growing”. That’s some science! Like JFK Jr saying “higher covid vaccination deaths” in his anti-science anti-vax screed. Kristi obviously enjoyed stinging the Democrat rancher. She is a deep thinker, our governor.
Well…the folks up in God’s Country are coming to the realization that they get what they vote for. When the Governor says South Dakota is ” Open for Business” she means “Everything is For Sale”. The farmers are now cheek by jowl with the brutal hand of Government. The Governor is negotiable. In fact, She’s sold out.
You are lucky, Mr. Blundt, there is an abundance of sand in your neck of the barren wastes. You can throw plentiful on the mostly flat skating rinks that are the streets of yours which are not gravel.
Governor sold out the State of South Dakota the first term. She was put back in office for the second term. Right out of the gate she showed you all what she was not going to do for South Dakota that’s been nothing, it’s still nothing. She can not answer a question
for you she she just lies.,or say’s it someone’s else’s fault. She has no intention to help the farmers or anyone else in this state with anything. She has shown all ( The State Of South Dakota).
Some Republicans are realizing Noem wasn’t the best person the reelect.
This Summit pipeline is completely unnecessary and definitely not something that should trigger eminate domain laws.
Think of some other way to get rid of the CO2 instead of run pipes through people’s fields.
Run the pipe along existing roads if you absolutely must do this boondoggle, unless the ditches are too full with wires and waterlines, in which case, just stop the nonsense.
I better not have to pay 1 cent for this BS.
you can write interminably long op-eds about this, but the traditional and decades-old use of eminent domain has been transportation.
Trails were first, followed by roads..They had to cross private property. The roads were followed by railroads and telegraph lines, telephones, electricity, and pipelines to carry water, sewage, natural gas, oil, etc.
The railroads, telegraph & telephone, electric companies, natural gas and oil companies, are all private corporations. Roads are used by commercial trucking companies, built to support the weight of heavy loads..The argument that eminent domain should not be used so that private business can transport something collapses. Eminent domain has always been used to establish transportation corridors, across private property, for private business
Conservatives have been carping about socialized agriculture for decades and for good reasons. Ethanol has only two thirds the energy density of gasoline or diesel and less than half of what natural gas contains but has an immensely larger carbon footprint. Few farm with gasoline powered equipment and ethanol is being grown with diesel fuel so how is that either conservative or sustainable?
@Algebra – You’re wrong about your assertion that privately owned railroads, privately owned oil companies, and privately owned natural gas companies have used eminent domain to take private property for their own business growth.
Give examples if you have them.
If a farmer is willing to accept government money for growing corn for ethanol, he should be willing to accept his part of dealing with the byproducts. But is the pipeline an actual solution to the problem? Because it looks like the main incentive to build it is to harvest more government money in the form of tax incentives.
Bear numbers in general are growing, Ms. Leslie. Except for Pandas, and Koalas, which aren’t really bears, I am told. But real bears, they grow in number.
Algebra…yes, they have, no doubt about it. Now we’re a country of 300 million and the country is developed. Maybe now is the time we revisit eminent domain and discuss what we want in the future. Can our country continue its’ progress without it or with a permutation.
ETSI—hey! Another great example of how the land grabbers aren’t liberal green globalists but Republican governors and private corporations!
On bears: read the link. We’re getting better at finding and counting polar bears. Their actual population and habitat are not increasing.
It’s refreshing to see progressives and conservatives uniting to stop this horrible boondoggle. While we might not agree on other issues, property rights and no eminent domain for private gain unites anyone who cares about fairness. A wise man once told me, ” be prepared to work with anyone who is willing for your cause because your enemy today will be your friend tomorrow, and your friend today might be your enemy tomorrow. It’s that theme that has united hundreds of property owners of all political persuasions to fight Summit’s and Navigator’s CO2 pipeline. This is not a partisan fight, but a fight of right from wrong, good versus evil. Thank you Corey for covering this issue, and yes Donald, I was involved with United Family Farmers fighting against a similar situation years ago. Because of that victory, we now have several rural water pipelines that were needed and were a benefit to the whole region of the state.
Boondoggle is the right word. I don’t understand why “thrifty” Dusty Johnson has not worked to cut this waste of Federal money. For the same $4.5B we could every ethanol plant $100,000,000!
Every Democrat in Pierre should have voted for Rep. Lems’ bill on Eminent Domain; but they didn’t. They fell for the smoke about “saving the planet” the Lederman blew at them.
Why can’t Republicans vote to save Federal money? Why can’t Democrats vote to support farmers?
I guess there is enough money for Republicans and Democrats to share.
How many times can Kristi reveal herself as a complete hypocrite? What an idiot. She chooses the wrong side EVERY time.
Its like Elon Musk*, The “new Rupert Murdoch in-training”!
Musk tweeted, “He’s afraid of a public debate, because he knows he’s wrong.”
Prof Peter Hotez MD PhD
@PeterHotez
Mark Cuban slams Joe Rogan and Elon Musk in vaccine debate | Fortune
“headline—Mark Cuban attacked Joe Rogan and Elon Musk in vaccines brawl on Twitter: ‘Way to talk in generalities Joe’ https://fortune.com/2023/06/18/mark-cuban-joe-rogan-elon-musk-kennedy-vaccine-debate/
”
Apparently similar in lack of higher educational credentials, like Kristi’s “degree”, Musk ‘moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University. After two days, he dropped out….’ wiki. Now they both have big soap boxes to voice misguided hip shots. Daily.
Misinformation AND intentional disinformation.
It seems clear that since the beginning of time humans have soiled every nest they ever occupied. But if we are to believe the experts, only 15,000 years ago SoDak was covered with glaciers. I keep wondering why they melted away so fast before the large scale burning of fossil fuels. The science correlates CO2 levels with rising average temperatures, but is that a cause and effect relationship? For example, the Pastafarians have shown there is a direct inverse relationship between the number of pirates who say arrggh! and average global temperatures. Just wondering… And “what about” all this huffing and puffing over private property rights and hating the Federal government? If the Feds hadn’t come in and appropriated by force that land from the already present inhabitants, then doled it out to settlers and states, there wouldn’t be any private property.
DeWeese said the term “sustainable” is a trigger word for getting people to surrender liberty voluntarily as part of an action plan to “inventory and control all resources and people, enforced with fear of climate change.”
Its a good thing there aren’t any ‘trigger’ words that get the Righties to surrender liberties voluntarily. FREE-DUMB
The rural Democratic representatives all voted in favor of our eminent domain bill, HB 1133 including our Native American friends. They understand because they have lived it. All the urban Sioux Falls Democrats voted against landowners property rights. Shame on them! They sided with the chamber of commerce, Summit Carbon Solutions, Navigator, and GEVO and their 31 lobbyists. They chose to side with Lederman and Rastetter with their vote against their own party platform and citizens. Some of us fellow Democrats will not forget that, and the party’s fortunes will never improve in the state with actions like that.
According to SDPB’s 4 Mar 2022 interview by Lori Walsh with Chris Hill— director of environmental and permitting for Summit Carbon Solutions—the design capacity for the Summit pipeline system was 12 million metric tons per year.
Let’s see:
1. In the US: (12 million metric tons sequestered per annum / 5586 million metric tons produced in the US per annum) X 100 = 0.21 percent of US CO2 emissions.
2. Globally: (12 million metric tons sequestered per annum/ 36,800 million metric tons produced globally per annum) X 100 = 0.033 percent of global CO2 emissions.
The 45Q Tax Credit (Sequestration Tax Credit) is currently set up for $50 per metric ton of CO2 permanently sequestered, a nice chuck of change and the driver for the pipeline, of course.
Permanent sequestration strategies—however feasible–are a drop in the bucket when it comes to carbon dioxide reduction, and alone, are like fiddling while Rome burns as the above calculations indicate. What is required is the complete integration of all sectors of the economy for net-zero emission energy systems and societal decarbonization. S.J. Davis’ was among the first to detail this in a classic 2018 paper:
https://energyinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Davis-et-al_Science2018_net-zero-emissions-energy-with-Suppl.pdf
I’ll believe it if I see it.
Well, the Dakota Scout has overtaken Pat’s Pissoir as South Dakota’s right wing shouter, so there is that.
Indeed, Lar. Who knew that young Mr. Ellis was not a raging libbie like most thought he was at that Sioux Falls newspaper? I have my doubts about the fellow named Sneve, though.
Pat Powers’ motivation is money but Ellis, Sneve and Goss are purist ideologues bent on destroying democracy.
No, Lar, they are three hacks who write to fatten their wallets no matter what one-sided lies they may tell. grudznick stands with your libbie brethren to push the new blog barbarians back from the gate.
That Sioux Falls and Rapid City are sewers by design escapes no one.
Just remember that Pierre is the lever on the stool.
Ed,
I am one who will never forget.
Assuming you yourself haven’t been overgrazing on the corporate propaganda, you gotta love The Epoch Times for their high ethical standards and dogged pursuit of the truth. Don’t be a tool and just take the word of this article’s author or publisher. Go online yourself. Here the Epoch Times’ Joshua Philipp at the 10:55 mark talks to a Fourth Generation South Dakota farmer for his perspective on this same issue.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/medical-establishment-hit-by-anti-woke-uprising_5342566.html?utm_campaign
Is it appropriate to ask why the author of this article chose to smear The Epoch Times?
Jeepers, a hyperlinked citation just isn’t enough for some people. ;-)
@ David Stone – Just ask him. Cory is accommodating. If you’re asking other readers, I’ll respond. Yes. It’s appropriate to ask why Cory “smeared” (your word) The Epoch Times.
@ David Stone… https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-epoch-times/
Overall, we rate The Epoch Times Right Biased and Questionable based on the publication of pseudoscience and the promotion of propaganda and conspiracy theories, as well as numerous failed fact checks.