Summit Carbon Solutions files second time for South Dakota permit
Following a major setback in South Dakota’s election, Summit Carbon Solutions submitted to the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, a second petition for a permit to build a carbon dioxide sequestration pipeline.
The pipeline is to be called the Midwest Carbon Express Pipeline, and, after an overwhelming majority of South Dakota voters voted “no” on Referred Law 21, it appears the pipeline may not be considered friendly by some in the state.
Referred Law 21, which appeared on the ballot replicated the language of Senate Bill 201. While SB 201 and RL 21 were dubbed the “Landowner Bill of Rights” by their proponents, many South Dakotans noted the absence of landowners in lobbying for the bill. Instead, support for the bill came in the form of paid lobbyists for Summit Carbon Solutions and ethanol plants. Many landowners traveled to Pierre on their own dime to oppose the bill because it would have given the state Public Utilities Commission the authority to override county “setback” statutes such as the 1,500 foot setback approved by Brown County commissioners.
“The 2,500-mile pipeline, including 700 miles in South Dakota, will transport CO2 from 57 ethanol plants across five states, including 14 in South Dakota and Gevo’s planned SAF plant near Lake Preston. The majority of CO2 volume will be safely and permanently stored in North Dakota via Class VI injection wells, but excess capacity will be available to support next-generation fuels like e-SAF and green methanol, along with uses in water treatment, food processing, and dry ice production, driving regional economic growth,” said Summit in an official news release.
“The application also 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,” said the news release.
Just last week, the three-person North Dakota Public Service Commission unanimously approved a pipeline permit after denying the company’s first permit request in 2023.
Since Summit has already obtained a permit in Iowa and no permitting process exists in Nebraska, South Dakota is the last box to check in order for the company to have governmental permission to proceed with building the pipeline.
Still, many landowners have not signed easements, and with legislative session fast approaching, there is no doubt that eminent domain will be a major topic of discussion.
The new permit request includes a new map which appears to have tried to avoid some hold-out landowners who have refused Summit easements despite the company’s insistent nature.
Wendy Schulz of Codington County lives in Watertown, S.D. She and her husband own a farmstead just south of Watertown, where they had planned to build a home where they could live and care for her aging father-in-law who has developed dementia and continues to live on the same piece of land.
“We waited 30 years to build a house,” said Schulz, whose husband and sons do limited farming on the family land, while they all earn off-farm income as well.
“This spring, we had hoped to break ground and the pipeline showed up. They were going to go diagonally across our land,” she said.
Shulz said Summit first approached her 85-year-old father in law about an easement. When she and her husband urged him not to sign without getting more information, Summit then contacted Wendy and her husband.
“When we met with the Summit rep, he was getting frustrated with us. He said ‘look, if you don’t cooperate with us now, when we get eminent domain, we will put that pipeline wherever we want on your land,'” she recalls.
Many people in South Dakota were “bullied and threatened” into signing easements, she believes.
Shulz offers the example of another company – a cellular phone company – that contacted them about building a tower on their land. “He said ‘your hill would be a great place for a tower.’ I said, ‘no.’ and he said ‘ok, thank you.'” That’s the appropriate consideration for private property rights, she said. “This is America. This isn’t Russia, this isn’t China,” she said. “Yet, Summit is trying to take people’s land.”
The Summit representative also told the Shulzes that 70 percent of neighbors had already signed. “But when we called our neighbors, they all said ‘what? We haven’t signed anything.’ They started out not being truthful and threatening, that is not a great start,” she said. The Shulz’s hired Brian Jorde to represent them when Summit sued them for eminent domain.
The Shulz family is concerned about their own safety since the original map showed the pipeline traveling within about 500 feet of where they had hoped to build. She said Summit has never produced a plume study for her to review.
The original plan also included the pipeline being laid through two of their tree shelterbelts and also through some native prairie.
Summit’s updated map shows the pipeline being moved slightly to the east of its original route so that it no longer physically touches Shulz land. Still, the Shulz family is concerned and wary of the whole idea.
“There are over 160 South Dakota landowners who have been paying a lawyer for two-and-a-half to three years to protect land that we own. We’re never going to recoup the thousands of dollars we have put in to fight this. Talk about putting a financial burden on young families, retired people, ag producers. I don’t understand how most people are even able to keep up with the legal expenses,” she said.
Lanette Butler, the former McPherson County Director of Equalization farms and ranches with her husband in the north-central part of that county.
Her family’s land was not on the former Summit map or the new map, but in looking at the map, she noticed that the new route appears to travel across more school and public lands (state land) than the previous route.
Summit Carbon Solutions plans to begin construction in early 2026, with operations starting in 2027, said the company in its news release.
Neither Shulz nor Butler has changed their minds about the pipeline, after seeing the new map.
“No, I don’t feel safe,” said Shulz. “I’m not going to build a house out there until this project is dead.”
