South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden signed a bill Thursday banning the use of eminent domain to build carbon dioxide pipelines, dealing a huge blow to developers of what’s been billed as the world’s largest CO2 storage and transportation network.
The Republican governor cast his decision as upholding property rights, not an attempt to kill Summit Carbon Solutions’ five-state, 2,500-mile pipeline network. Instead, Rhoden said the new law offers the company an opportunity to rebuild trust with landowners.
“South Dakota landowners feel strongly that the threat of involuntary easements for the proposed carbon dioxide pipeline infringes on their freedoms and their property rights,” Rhoden, who took office after former Gov. Kristi Noem became Homeland Security secretary, said in a signing statement issued Thursday. “Freedom ends when it infringes on the freedom of another.”
If the law doesn’t kill the project, it at least makes building the $8 billion pipeline network a whole lot harder. South Dakota sits between most of the nearly 60 ethanol plants the pipeline would serve and the wells in North Dakota where their planet-warming CO2 would be injected deep underground.
