If we can’t get the Legislature to change the game to protect landowners from the corporate carbon dioxide pipeliners who are stealing their property, perhaps the landowners can play the game to rally key Republicans to their side.
Iowa-based, Republican-led Summit Carbon Solutions is using South Dakota Codified Law 21-35-31 to justify entering private farmland without owners’ permission to survey, dig trenches, and drill holes as prep work for its proposed CO2 pipeline network in eastern South Dakota. SDCL 21-35-31 grants persons (including corporations) using the power of eminent domain authority to make such forcible entry if they (1) have filed a siting permit with the Public Utilities Commission, (2) given uncooperative landowners and tenants 30 days notice of their intent to invade, and (3) pay for or at least put up security for any damage they do to the property.
So, landowners, why not get incorporated and propose a carbon dioxide pipeline of your own? There’s certainly room in the market for competition and additional carbon hauling capacity: Summit Carbon Solutions plans to move only 18 million tons of CO2 per year, which is less than 7% of the 275 million tons of CO2 emitted by South Dakota and the other four states the SCS pipeline will serve. Landowners can thus make a business case for building their pipeline right alongside the Summit and Navigator pipelines.
The landowners threatened by Summit Carbon Solutions’ use of eminent domain should thus apply for a siting permit from the Public Utilities Commission and submit a map for the SNL Freedom Pipeline—S for Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck, N for Governor Kristi Noem, and L for former SDGOP chair and current Summit lobbyist Dan Lederman, through whose property the Freedom Pipeline will run:
You may also want to consider pipeline extensions that would run through Congressman Dusty Johnson’s property in Mitchell and the properties of Senator John Thune and Mayor Paul TenHaken in Sioux Falls. I leave it to your corporate directors to determine the pipeline paths that would generate the most political capital—er, I mean, carbon sequestration and revenue.
Landowners, once you’ve filed your PUC permit and your map, drive over to Schoenbeck’s primary residence on Lake Kampeska, to Noem’s farm on Highway 81 south of Kone’s Korner, and Lederman’s villa in Dakota Dunes, and knock on their doors. Ask to walk around the property, take some measurements, and dig some holes. When Lee, Kristi (well, it’ll be Bryon, because Kristi is never home), and Dan say, “Hell no—get off my lawn!”, you say “No problem—see you next month,” hand them documents giving legal notice of your intent to come back and survey 30 days from now, and peacefully depart.
And next month, you do come back with a whole crowd of farmers—if you form your pipeline corporation as a cooperative consisting of all the farmers affected by Summit’s use of eminent domain, then surely every member of the cooperative will want to come watch and help with the survey, to make sure it’s done correctly—with shovels and theodolites and skid steers and guns. You park grain trucks at every entrance to the Schoenbeck, Noem, and Lederman estates to secure the properties. You walk around the properties, dig a few holes, maybe chop a few rosebushes down so you can get accurate measurements. You take your time, triple-checking your measurements and surveying every inch of the property so you can provide the PUC with the fullest answers to their questions about your proposed SNL Freedom Pipeline. You might even have to come back several days in a row to make sure you find the absolutely safest, most stable route for the SNL pipeline through these properties. Be sure to call the press—you want to make sure you conduct your survey of the Schoenbeck, Noem, and Lederman properties as publicly as possible—but also bring your own cameras and phones to you can document and livestream everything to do and see on Schoenbeck’s, Noem’s, and Lederman’s properties. You may also want to notify the sheriffs so they can send deputies to ensure the safety of your survey teams and to enforce your legal right to enter other people’s property.
Your surveying may, of course, do damage to the Schoenbeck, Noem, and Lederman properties, so make sure you call Tomi Lahren, the John Birch Society, and all the other prominent conservatives backing your cause and get them to chip in to a land security fund to pay for those incidental damages incurred during your perfectly legal presence on Schoenbeck’s, Noem’s, and Lederman’s property.
Send a 100-farmer survey team tromping around the backyards of the Senate boss, the Governor, and their good pipeline pal, under full protection and authority of South Dakota Codified Law 21-35-31, and watch how fast they convene a Special Session to change that law
Brilliant idea, Mr. H but drilling a deep borehole under Aurora in Brookings County keeps the whole CO2 thing under local control.
Eastern South Dakota sits on the Superior portion of the North American Craton which has been stable for the last 600 million years.
Rare earth minerals, especially germanium and gallium, certainly fall under the umbrella of eminent domain for necessity to USA.
A research mission, complete with bore holes, could happen anywhere on any land.
You really don’t own your land, you know.
You’re just taking care of it for “We the Group of People”.
I’m thinkin’ open sewage ditches through Schoenbeck, Noem, Lederman, Johnson, Thune, and TenHaken properties.
As fun as another pipeline would be, grudznick is with my close personal friend, Lar. Another Borehole would be the best thing we could have #4Science.
(Dr. McT, call me on the telephone. I have some calculations I need you to verify.)
“Send a 100-farmer survey team tromping around the backyards of the Senate boss, the Governor, and their good pipeline pal, under full protection and authority of South Dakota Codified Law 21-35-31, and watch how fast they convene a Special Session to change that law.”
Brilliant, Cory. This would indeed put an end to Noem’s passive, insouciant position.
As far as gallium and germanium, they are not nor have they ever been, rare earth minerals.
Kurt Evans aka DaveFN is wrong but boy, am I ever living rent free in his messed up head. WOW!
Certain individuals not formally educated in the chemical sciences and entirely outside their area of expertise clearly don’t know the difference between a rare element and a rare earth mineral.
The last time Dr. McT, Mr. DaveFN, old friend of the blog Bill, and gruznick had breakfast together, our collective good friend Bob stood us up yet we solved many of the worlds problems. And we never once took the farmer view into our discussions.
Rent free, Kurt. I’m living in there rent free …
In your head, it’s mostly dead.
In dreams of horrors you were bred
A chilling truth I must have said
Echo of a sanity gone to shred
PHL IV
Cutsey but only that. And no, DaveFN is not Kurt.
Your supposedly incredible powers of discernment once again are proven nothing but fake, rather like you yourself.
Bob McTag. Caught you in your own trap. For a Professor you lack the street sense for career advancement . But, you do work for a second level school, don’t youTagger? lol 😂
Borehole in Brookings County for sequestration? Great—we’ll go survey under Senator Tim Reed’s house for that. THe more Republican legislators we can involve in the SNL project, the more likely it is to priduce the desired results.
Landowners have to put up with asparagus thieves coming on to their property and stealing the asparagus off the land they own because it is growing in the public right of way. Then the thieves sell it at Farmers’ Markets.
Most recently, property owners had their land trenched for the installation of fiberoptic cable. More private gain.
The 5th Amendment to the US Constitution requires “just compensation,” but property owners are not compensated for the taking of their asparagus, nor for the destruction of their landscaping by the telecommunications services they didn’t sign up for.
That is how this works. Why is a pipeline project different?
PS 0 = DaveFN – I don’t believe you, Kurt. It’s verified and cross checked who you are, electronically. But it’s your mental health that matters not who you identify as, right?
Kurt, are you OK?
https://www.adamasintel.com/gallium-germanium-rare-earths-insight/
Say what”?
Dear Mr. H. Good article..Lamestream media filters information so you may have missed the fact that one of those you mentioned did get the deadly CO2 pipeline moved away from a property in the Watertown area. He sent a message to someone with some control of tbe route that if the pipeline was not moved away from this property, he would not like some legislation in the next session in Pierre. This is well documented but apparently not well known.
Elderly iowan laments the condition of the entire state of iowa and its politics, on both sides.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/iowa-view/2023/07/17/first-ragbrai-1973-that-iowa-long-gone/70419134007/
Interesting opinion.and i heartily agree, for the most part.
Dave Spier, the Fifth Amendment to the United States’ Constitution guarantees Due Process and Just Compensation for the taking of private property. If “somebody” in the Watertown area used existing legal means to have an infrastructure project moved away from a particular property, that is the due process part at work. Nobody needs a special legislative session on this.
Algebra, the SD legislature showed what they think of several amendments to the US Constitution this last session – for thee, but not for me, ICYMI.
If Mr. H writes up how that deadly CO2 pipeline move in the Watertown area came about, it will draw a lot of interest. For several reasons best not mentioned, I won’t blame him if he foregoes bringing more attention to this issue.
Write that article, Cory. I’ll spread it among the “liberal shadow government” in Watertown. *Are shadow governments real, grudznick?”