Summit Carbon Solutions to try, try again to push a CO2 pipeline in South Dakota, this time with “major reroutes.”

South Dakota Searchlight yesterday posted a piece by Joshua Haiar reporting that Summit Carbon Solutions wants to try again to build a pipeline through South Dakota. The pipeline would carry carbon dioxide emitted by corn fermentation at ethanol plants (like the one above in a public domain photo posted on wikimedia commons). Summit’s original plan went to a vote and was defeated in the last election by a 59-41 margin.

The new application submitted to the state has “major reroutes,” but, according to the Haiar piece, a new route map is not yet available.

Summit’s press release, dated Nov. 19, says that “the application highlights major reroutes in Spink, Brown, McPherson, and Lincoln Counties, along with numerous micro-adjustments, resulting from more than a year of one-on-one work with landowners to find mutually agreeable solutions.” 

There’s a euphemistic quality to Summit’s statement, which entirely ignores the significant, if not altogether conclusive, defeat that was handed to them by South Dakota voters in the last election. Calling this new application the result of “numerous micro-adjustments” has got to be an understatement. If the new route map doesn’t represent a major overhaul of the company’s modified plan, I’d be surprised if this replay gets very far with the landowners and localities affected by it.

Same goes for South Dakota’s overall voting population.

Why not? Because un-addressed by the press release, except maybe in the broadest of terms, are the issues of eminent domain and local control, which are the twin torpedoes that sank the first Summit proposal at the polls.

In its press release, Summit says, “the company remains committed to working collaboratively with South Dakota landowners and communities to develop a project that strengthens the state’s agricultural legacy while paving the way for energy innovation.” 

We should be looking forward to the specifics of Summit’s plans to work collaboratively with landowners and local governments, because until the company convinces us that eminent domain will not be the cudgel they want it to be when acquiring routes on private land – and that local governments will have very much to say about what pipeline construction will do to their neighborhoods –I doubt that South Dakotans will buy Summit’s argument that their proposal is a really good thing for this state.

John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Republish with permission.