'Gold standard' bill of carbon pipeline opponents dashed again

House committee sends five more bills to pipeline purgatory

(Austin Goss/The Dakota Scout)

PIERRE – The dream bill of opponents to the construction of a carbon pipeline across eastern South Dakota met its demise for the second year in a row.

And along with it, four other bills dealing with pipelines and their construction were easily dispatched too.

Rep. Jon Hansen’s House Bill 1219 would prohibit carbon dioxide pipelines from using eminent domain for the sake of constructing their project — a measure that would almost certainly spell the end for Summit Carbon Solutions’ plan to build a pipeline across eastern South Dakota. The one sentence bill says that a company transporting carbon for the sake of “geological storage or for geological sequestration” cannot use eminent domain. Summit intends to do just that with the carbon it transports at a site in North Dakota, and has indicated its intent to pursue eminent domain lawsuits against any remaining landowner holdouts.

A nearly identical bill passed through the full House last year, before being easily defeated in a Senate committee.

“This bill lets you build the pipeline, go ahead and do it,” Hansen said. “Just do it voluntarily, without unjustly condemning hundreds of landowners private property. That is all we are asking.”

Like clockwork, many familiar faces from the effort to beat back Summit showed up to share now often-told stories about how the pipeline would negatively impact them, should it be built.

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