Ill-advised Referendum Is Anti-Landowner and Anti-Agriculture
(Pierre, SD) A new ill-advised campaign committee was formed this week to launch a campaign to refer SB 201 passed by the legislature and signed by Governor Noem. The referendum is anti-landowner and anti-agriculture.
“Senate Bill 201 is a major victory for landowners, but if a referendum is successful the landowners will ultimately lose and Summit Carbon will still win because pipelines already preempt county ordinances,” said Jason Glodt, founding member of the SD Ag Alliance, “The bottom line is that a referendum can only kill the Landowner Bill of rights, it can’t stop federal preemption over county ordinances.”
“A referendum of SB 201 makes no sense because it would only hurt landowners by killing the Landowner Bill of Rights,” said Rob Skjonsberg, founding Member of the SD Ag Alliance. “If the referendum is successful Summit will just sue in federal court and win and landowners will get nothing.”
The large majority of landowners across South Dakota support the carbon capture pipeline project. Nearly 75% of the landowners on the proposed route have already signed voluntary easements and polling shows strong support across the state with Republican voters.
Last month, the South Dakota Ag Alliance released poll results showing a majority (55%) of Republican primary voters support carbon capture pipelines when landowners are given further protections and additional compensation.
When asked the question, “Would you support carbon capture pipelines in South Dakota, if the legislature provided for more protections and additional compensation for South Dakota landowners?”, Fifty-five percent of Republicans said yes. Twenty-two percent said no and twenty-three percent were undecided.
The poll was conducted by Co/efficient, a national research and analytics company that has done work in all 50 states. The poll included 1,017 likely Republican Primary voters. It was conducted on January 30th and January 31st, 2024, using mobile text message responses and landline phone interviews. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.06%. A poll memorandum is attached.
Senate Bill 201 passed the Senate 24-10 and the House 39-31. The legislation includes the most significant sections in Landowner Bill of Rights with extensive protections for landowners and millions of dollars of reoccurring payments for both landowners and counties. The package does not change local control over zoning.
Landowner Bill of Rights
- Compensation for Landowners: Requires carbon capture pipelines to pay landowners $500 to access their land for surveying (HB 1185) and at least .50 cents per linear foot of pipeline through their property in the form of property tax relief (SB 201)
- Compensation for Counties: Allows counties to collect $1.00 per linear foot of pipeline that runs through their county. At least 50% of the surcharge must be used for property tax relief for landowners on the route. The remaining revenue can be spent by counties at their discretion. (SB 201)
- Indemnity for Landowners: Requires pipeline companies to indemnify landowners for liability. (SB 201)
- Minimum Burial Depth: Requires pipeline to be buried at least 4 ft deep, exceeding federal regulations of 3 ft (SB 201)
- Disclosure of Dispersion Models: Requires carbon pipeline companies to make dispersion modeling public. (SB 201)
- Lifetime Drain Tile Repairs: Requires pipeline companies to repair any damage to drain tile (SB 201)
- Impact Mitigation: Requires pipeline companies to file an impact mitigation plan. (SB 201)
- Leak Liability: Makes carbon pipeline companies liable to the landowner for any damage caused by leaks. (SB 201)
- Land Surveyors Must be from SD: Requires land surveyors be South Dakota residents. (SB 201)
- Easements Terminate if Not Used in 5 years: Easements for pipelines terminate if pipeline does not receive PUC permit in 5 years and terminates after 5 years of non-use. (HB 1186)
- Bans Perpetual Easements: Limits easements to a maximum of 99 years (SB 201)
- Information Disclosure: Requires carbon pipeline companies to report linear footage of pipes in counties and disclose if they claim a tax credit. (SB 201) Landowner will also receive results of survey and examination and contact information for person in charge of inspection. (HB 1185)
- Mortgage Limitations: Protects landowners by restricting mortgages held by an easement holder so the mortgage only attaches to the easement holders rights and not to the land or obligate the property owner. (HB 1186)
- Easements Must Be Written: Requires companies to put easements in writing. (HB 1186)
- Survey and Access Limits: Landowners reserve right to challenge the right to survey in circuit court. Landowners must be given 30 days written notice and include details about date, time, duration, location and contact information. (HB 1185)
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South Dakota Carbon Capture Memo by Pat Powers on Scribd
I read that some of the landowner protections were removed in the latest conference committee. Is this correct?
What happens when the federal subsidies end?
Observations:
Glodt and Skjonsberg are worth their weight in gold. I don’t care if you agree with them or not. They need to be paid much more. They are marketing and political geniuses.
The people they are up against sadly are not
For starters they couldn’t even get the name right.
Wow this is a mouthful: South Dakota Property Rights and Local Control Alliance (SDPRLCA). What? That’s a terrible acronym.
Who wants to bet this pipeline never gets built?
If 201 is repealed, it is more likely to be built, as there will be fewer impediments from the pipeline company’s viewpoint. They can use eminent domain to force the easement, pay whatever is determined to be “just compensation,” and go on about their merry way.
This is the most likely option. Anti-pipeliners can’t see the forest for the trees.
If the removal of co2 happens causing crop yields to decrease, the forests likely will also be in jeopardy!
If you think removing excess CO2 is going to kill plant life, you’re woefully uninformed.
If you think removing excess CO2 is going to reduce global warming, you’re woefully uninformed.
I mean, you’re absolutely wrong lol. Preventing excess CO2 from even entering the atmosphere will certainly slow Climate Changes effects. Prevent enough excess from entering and even pull some of the already atmospheric CO2 out and over time the problem will go away.
Just like if a pre-diabetic person eats healthier, drinks less, and works out they don’t get diabetes.
So you are saying Summit will fund the referendum to make it easier for themselves?
I guess if you are in favor of the pipeline, you should sign this and vote to repeal 201.
These people are such useful idiots….
One can be both pro-pipeline and pro-landowner. In which case 201 is a fine compromise between the two.
yes and without 201, the pipeline company can just force the easements with eminent domain and pay only “fair market value.”
Very true, those who voted no voted to cut their own throats.
I don’t think the word salad committee should hold their breath for Summit to fund their repeal but it would be quite a conundrum for them if their enemy offered them money. I wonder if their heads would explode.
These people want to fight for the sake of fighting. Even if they win, landowners will pay the price and summit will bulldoze right through their property. Not very bright.
Where are counties supposed to get money to provide essential services and keep our schools open they keep saying no to all ag and energy development? Their only option will be to raise taxes on all of us.
Just wait until they kill the DOE. Our taxes will go through the roof when the welfare stops for rural states.
Lawyer and founding member of SD AG Alliance Jason Glodt quoted in this article predicts the federal government forcing the CO2 pipeline on South Dakota counties. Rob Skjonsberg also founding member of SD AG Alliance, founder and former partner of GSG Strategies, LLC, a government and political consulting firm in Pierre, SD., former registered POET lobbyist and long time political operative in Senator Rounds group predicts, with credibility considering his past, victorious federal law-fare by Summit. And yet with all their certainty that the CO2 pipeline will succeed they are upset by a referendum to reverse SD 201. My question to them is “Guys if you are winning what are you so upset about!”
Because maybe they are annoyed at those rallying against 201 because these individuals only continue to stoke inter-party fighting, and make the party appear scientifically illiterate and economically shortsighted.
SD Ag Alliance spokesman are not worried about the party but private short term profits not for the state or people of
SD. The side that is not scientifically illiterate or economically shortsighted is not the side you think.
No, the uninformed are exactly who one would think they are, those opposed to 201.
Nearly every article discussing this issue you’ve only posted to a rag funded by climate change denialists and petro magnates that hate ethanol because it cuts into their profits.
If ethanol goes away, what happens to Onida when Ring Neck shuts down? Or all the towns with a Poet plant? Farm values plummet, corn prices plummet, people who worked or depended on those who worked the plants close their businesses and move away. So yeah, those opposed to the pipelines are also economically short sighted. And stupid to boot.
the counties that fight it will lose, but only after wasting a lot of money doing it. This cost will be borne by the insurance pool, which will distribute the cost to every county in the state, and from the counties to every property tax payer in the state
This morning at the Conservatives with Common Sense Breakfasting, after the morning rant about all the crazy people running for the legislatures, we will debate this petitioning against landowners.
When discussion above becomes pro pipeline or anti pipeline, and RINO vs liberal, I just can’t help myself but to point out the gross misinformation.
Trump signed the bipartisan budget bill in 2018 which contained both carbon capture and nuclear energy. You don’t have to be a green new deal lover to believe in diversified energy production.
With fossil fuels, there is an also an attempt to reduce emissions and put into place subsidies to encourage so. The 45Q tax credits work for both fossil fuel and carbon-dioxide producing energy. The world’s largest coal power plant with carbon capture technology is in Houston TX. Tax credits are only the first step in ensuring stable energy across all industries. It is a huge misconception that this all is taking place in a vacuum, in SD, for ethanol/CO2 only.
We all put ethanol into our vehicles. Ethanol is contained in 98% of fossil fuel used for vehicles. We drive pickups with reduced emission technology. It seems extremely hypocritical to drive your clean diesel DEF pickup and criticize those who want to take part in CO2 capture.
The opposition to the bills passed by the legislature this year seems generally uninformed and uneducated on what is going on around them. I encourage all to take the time to study this more as it is bipartisan, or non-partisan, and it has huge implications for the future of energy and agribusiness.
“The rules were simple, as far as I could tell. Being correct had nothing to do with substance and everything to do with style. Whoever yelled the loudest was telling the greatest version of the truth.”
You all are putting a lot of trust in an out of state company that has been known to spread a lot of slosh and call it the truth. Is it a wrap that the 45 q credits are guaranteed for 12 years? Also you do realize that all liability goes away if there is a merger later on? One new partner can create a newly named company. Keep on trusting…
I didn’t mention a company at all. It has nothing to do with a company. Which means you missed the point completely.
Let’s talk company I.E. summit. I’ll go on to say that 6% of land owners, on average, say no and eminent domain is used. Summit is only at 75% of voluntary easements. If they were to have done their research and entered into the land negotiations with knowledge of SD and it’s people – the would be at 94%. And they know this. The messed up. Live and learn.
With the land owner rights tacked on to SB201 – that will likely never happen again. Difficult now with this project, because there has been so much publicity. Future projects will have landowners (except 6%) in line to get their “above fair market value” deal.
Listening to the debate about this, I think there are a lot of people who don’t appreciate just how dependent the state’s economy is on ethanol.
I remember the pre-ethanol years of the 80s. There were no jobs. We were living in Mitchell, and it seemed that every household was struggling to keep just one person employed. A large number of people moved to Minnesota and Arizona.
One evening, sitting by the windows in the Happy Chef restaurant, we saw a convoy of Ryder rental trucks being driven into town, to be rented by people who were leaving.
The real estate agents ran out of “for sale” signs, and then they left the state, too. I stayed to finish nursing school; ran into the nurse who had been president of the class ahead of me, who told me she had finally found a job, but it had taken her a year.
We moved to Georgia, had our house on the market for over two years, and finally, unable to sell it, we gave up & defaulted on the mortgage. It wasn’t even viable as a rental property. “Everybody’s moving into low income housing,” I was told.
It was ethanol production which turned that around. People who don’t remember the 80s should not talk about how everything will be fine if the ethanol producers leave; the state’s economy is not diverse enough to survive it. Health care, which had also taken a hit in 1983 when Congress imposed DRGs on Medicare, has since recovered, but now with Medicaid expanded, that’s going to take another punch. You can’t hit both healthcare and ethanol and think tourism and gambling are going to cover the losses..
So what you’re saying is SD would be insolvent without the Fed propping us up. Thanks for acknowledging.
lots of people work for the federal government, almost 3 million in fact. If Uncle Sam wants to pay you to do something, why shouldn’t you take the job and the money?
Well said Anne… and once farmers started making money thanks to ethanol driving corn prices up, they became Republicans. Even the Jim River Valley which was once the backbone of the SD Democrat Party is solid red now.
Free money is what makes us tick as a state. The budget has ballooned under Noem. It’s out of control now. It used to be just over $4 billion. It’s now well over $7 billion with a greater reliance on federal dollars and other funds.
….and reliance on property tax revenues.
It’s a long story, but one of the first things we did when we returned to South Dakota in 1991 was go to a church service in Chamberlain. Sitting in the pew I noticed how shabbily dressed the congregants were. Not casually dressed, shabbily. Their Sunday clothing was threadbare and tattered. I remember thinking it was evidence of how hard the 80s had been on people living in the middle of the state. They had not been able to buy new clothes; if they were’t buying new clothes, they were not buying any other non-essential items, and they weren’t paying sales taxes.
If the people who buy ethanol want a reduced carbon index the producers should be able to supply it, because consumers will buy what they want from somebody else. The notion that ethanol production will continue here without carbon capture is just wishful thinking. It won’t.
Exactly what Anne said.
The suggestion that ethanol is the salvation of South Dakota means that South Dakotas viability is dependent on government handouts. That is a very pessimistic view of South Dakota. The economy of the 70s was largely the fault of the Federal government over spending, poor federal monetary policy, and the failure of looking to US production of energy. Farmers produce one of the essential products for humanity to survive. The value is there, just break up large agriculture middle man businesses and stop government programs and regulations, that suppress prices farmers receive. CO2 sequestration is an ill advised activity propped up by false assumptions and government money. SD corn producers would benefit with more CO2 not less in our air. Lee County Farm Bureau makes my point.
https://amboynews.com/stories/farm-bureau-to-offer-50-cent-breakfast,22939