Lincoln County Commissioners Push Back Decision on Carbon Pipeline Rules

by John Hult (South Dakota Searchlight/Yahoo!) Commissioners in South Dakota’s fastest-growing county punted on four carbon dioxide pipeline ordinances on Christmas Eve, opting to let their planning staff and two new commissioners start from scratch in the new year.

The Lincoln County Commission has wrestled with its approach to carbon pipelines for about two years. Several counties in South Dakota have passed ordinances restricting underground carbon pipelines so strictly that the company proposing a carbon capture pipeline through South Dakota, Summit Carbon Solutions, says it would be impossible to fully comply with all the local requirements and still build the project. The company has also applied for a state permit, which is under review.

Lincoln County is not one of the counties with stricter rules for carbon pipelines than Summit would prefer, though the controversial project has animated discussions about the issue and likely impacted the results of the most recent county commission elections.

Two commissioners, Jim Jibben and Mike Poppens, lost their primary elections to anti-pipeline candidates, one of whom appeared in the commission chambers Tuesday to voice her concerns about the four ordinances up for possible passage.

“I’m opposed to all of them,” said incoming commissioner Betty Otten, who also accused the current commission of being too cozy with Summit to be trusted to make decisions on the matter.

An ad-hoc study committee offered suggestions to the planning commission, which held public hearings on the options following the November election.

The first and second options would have put planners in charge of deciding if a carbon pipeline project would qualify as a permitted land use. The planning commission did not recommend commissioners pass those.

The third would have required carbon pipeline companies to seek conditional use permits, which would open up a public hearing and the chance for opponents to challenge the county commission in court if its members voted to give Summit a permit.

The fourth would have barred pipelines in agricultural areas, but allowed them in areas zoned as industrial. With that option, the company could ask the commission to rezone the entire narrow strip of land under which the pipeline would run as industrial land. Voters would be able to refer the commission’s decision on the rezone to a public vote.

Vote faces pushback

Every Lincoln County resident to offer public comment on the ordinances Tuesday asked the commission to send the ordinances back to the planning commission, but not before telling them they’d rather not talk about them until next year.

No one in the room liked the ideas on offer, said (Commissioner Tiffani) Landeen, a Sioux Falls attorney and former Turner County state’s attorney, whose own take on the ordinances was that they were vague and unworkable. The last option might seem the most palatable to opponents, as it offers the chance to vote down the commission’s choice. But even there, she said, she doesn’t like the idea of having “this weird strip” of light industrial land running through the county for no reason but to make a pipeline possible.

“The language of these ordinances doesn’t do what anybody needs them to do,” Landeen said. READ MORE

Excerpt from South Dakota Searchlight/Yahoo!: South Dakota regulators will charge a carbon dioxide pipeline company up to $876,000 to help cover the cost of evaluating its new permit application.

It’s Summit Carbon Solutions’ second attempt for a South Dakota permit. The state Public Utilities Commission rejected Summit’s first application last year, due in part to the pipeline route’s conflicts with local siting laws. The company recently reapplied with an adjusted route. READ MORE