Plus—Sioux Falls City Council in Bed with Chinese Communists!
21 Crooks landowners are taking the Sioux Falls City Council to court over the planned move of the Smithfield Foods pork plant from downtown Sioux Falls their doorstep at Foundation Park north of the big city. The plaintiffs want either to reverse the conditional use permit the city approved for the project on March 17 or to get the Sioux Falls Development Foundation to buy their homes for 2.33 times the assessed valuation, which the Foundation did for one of the plaintiffs’ former neighbors.
The plaintiffs’ fundamental claim is that the city is illegally taking their property interests by making it impossible for them sell their homes and move away from the looming “abattoir”:
7. Given the abutting and proximate land use proposed by Smithfield, the Announcement Date news instantaneously destroyed the fair market value and desirability of Petitioners’ residential properties for use as single-family dwellings. Several Petitioners who entertained placing their homes on the market were advised by knowledgeable real estate brokers that it is too late for that approach as with disclosure, no one wishes to purchase an existing home near a hog slaughter plant, other than those willing to speculate on an array of former residential properties, all at steep discount, for possible future use as a supporting industrial site.
…20. The Petitioners wish to leave the environs of the CUP site, just as quickly as they can—but they are now unable to sell their respective homes, as no one in their right mind, other than scalpers and scavengers or future truck stop developers, would buy such a home in the immediate vicinity of a place where more than 20,000 hogs meet their end, each and every working day with thousands of added vehicles, including 400 Class 8 trucks, coming and going daily [Monte and Theresa Burgraff et al. v. City Council, City of Sioux Falls, Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Second Judicial Circuit of South Dakota, 2026.04.13, page 4/paragraph 7 and page 8/paragraph 20].
The petitioners support their claim with a claim that Development Foundation President Bob Mundt told Lori Wallen Clausen, whose $988,604 property at 47155 258th Street the Foundation did buy for $2,300,000 before announcing Smithfield would be building next door, that (petitioners’ words) “in a few years… she would not want to be living there” [Petition, 2026.04.13, p. 6/parag. 11].
The petition is signed by two attorneys, A.J. Swanson of Canton and our old radical right-wing friend Steven Haugaard of Sioux Falls, who failed to turn anti-corporate concern over property rights into electoral victory in his 2022 run for Governor against Kristi Noem. I smell Haugaard’s hand in the petition’s reminder to the court that Smithfield is run by Communists:
The Council’s action facilitates the unnecessary ‘gifting’ of $90,000,000 of taxpayer money to one of the wealthiest billionaires in the world, who also happens to be a Chinese Communist Party member who has served as a deputy in their congress for the CCP [Petition, 2026.04.13, p. 11/parag 29(a)(ii).].
The petitioners’ lawyers here may be recalling a 2013 hearing on Shuanghui’s purchase of SMithfield Foods and other foreign acquisitions of American food companies before the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, in which Professor Usha Haley, director of the Robbins Center for Global Business and Strategy at West Virginia University, noted that Shuanghui’s “Chairman Wan Long is a member of China’s National People’s Congress that formalizes the Chinese Communist Party’s measures.” Daniel Slane, Commissioner of the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, added, “Chairman Wan is a high-ranking Member of the Chinese Communist Party and a 15-year veteran of the National People’s Congress. He was appointed to the position by the Chinese Communist Party and he answers to the Chinese Communist Party; and if he does not do what they say, they will remove him or worse.”
Shuanghui is now known as WH Group. Wan Long is still the boss and, like many other WH Group leaders, as of 2022, was still a card-carrying Communist:
WH Group’s chairman, Wan Long, as well as multiple board members and some senior management were identified as CCP members in a 2022 Chinese-language stock exchange filing from a subsidiary called Shuanghui Investment and Development Co. (SIDC). WH Group and Chinese corporate records from SIDC also show that WH Group’s chairman and several top executives hold, or previously held, Chinese government positions.
…Born in 1940, Wan Long joined the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the age of 20 before entering China’s meat industry, according to Chinese state-run media outlet People’s Daily. Wan Long has since earned various Chinese government positions and state awards, his archived SIDC profile states.
Between 1998 and 2018, Wan Long served as a representative to the National People’s Congress, according to his archived SIDC profile. The National People’s Congress operates “under the leadership” of the CCP, and its officials are “invariably influential members of the CCP and leaders of major mass organizations,” according to the Congressional Executive Commission on China.
SIDC’s archived website also notes that Wan Long has received a “special allowance” from China’s State Council. This refers to a reward system created to “strengthen and improve the work of the Party’s intellectuals,” according to the state-run China News Service. The tax-free reward ranges from a monthly stipend of roughly $85 to an approximately $2,800 lump sum payment, according to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. However, it is unclear if Wan Long still receives this government reward.
Wan Long also earned the honorific “senior political engineer” from the Chinese government, according to his archived SIDC profile. Senior political engineers are required to possess a “relatively systemic grasp of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory,” according to the State Council’s State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) also named Wan Long as one of 100 “Outstanding Private Entrepreneurs In The 40 Years Of Reform And Opening-Up” in 2018, according to the All-China Federation Of Industry And Commerce, a UFWD subordinate agency that co-sponsored the award.
The UFWD engages in “influence activities and intelligence operations,” according to the House Select Committee on the CCP [Philip Lenczycki, “Leadership of Major US Landowner Chock-Full of Chinese Communist Party Members,” Daily Caller, 2024.01.25].
Communist infiltration makes for great blogging and fringe political recruitment, but it is irrelevant to the questions of law at stake in the Crooks plaintiffs’ complaint. Steve, A.J., focus up!
In South Dakota the Big Sioux River is a toxic sh!t hole and is considered one of the most polluted waterways in the US frequently ranked in the top 10 to 15 for toxic releases. Roughly 75-80% of the river is classified as impaired, with excessive E. coli bacteria and sediment from agricultural runoff, along with urban waste and worse.
Smithfield Foods has historically been the leading industrial polluter of the Big Sioux River though it was recently overtaken as the state’s top toxic releaser by Wharf Resources’ strip mine in the Black Hills. Smithfield gets a wrist-slap from South Dakota’s Republican-owned Department of Aggravation and Natural Ruination nearly every year for discharging toxic pollution into the Big Sioux River but it is usually a measly sum.
Pollutants include but are not limited to: 1. Refrigeration Chemicals (Very Common, High Risk) 2. Cleaning & Sanitation Chemicals (Long-Term Soil Impact) 3. Fuel Storage & Petroleum Products (Very Common Superfund Trigger) 4. Rendering & Waste Disposal Residues 5. Heavy Metals (Building & Equipment Related) 6. Asbestos (Extremely Likely in 100-Year-Old Facility) 7. PCBs (Mid-Century Electrical Equipment) 8. Nitrites & Nitrates (From Curing Operations) 9. Smokehouses & Combustion Residues 10. Pesticides & Rodenticides
A site becomes a Superfund site when: contamination is significant, there is groundwater impact, there is off-site migration and responsible parties cannot fund cleanup. A slaughterhouse alone doesn’t automatically equal Superfund, but: the biggest Superfund triggers in this type of facility would be leaking underground fuel tanks, PCB contamination, large-scale petroleum contamination, significant groundwater nitrate pollution, industrial ammonia system leaks and buried waste lagoons.
Well Mr. Kurtz, I used to fish for bull heads at Aunt Annie Thorsen’s between Dell Rapids and Baltic in the early 1960’s. The only danger I detected was a huge snapping turtle by the bridge. I imagine it was bad then too but it’s sad to think about. Your sure it isn’t fake news?
The most interesting thing is the insider information one homeowner got the benefit of.Those commies are wheelers and dealers. Give a commie a little capitalism and their off like cocaine salmon.
Only the rich get bailed out!
How do the poors not understand this!
Also it’s only communism when the poors want something like food and health care in America.
Actually given a hand out to actual communists is just capitalism.
Put on your plaid suit, gel your hair and get in line!