A carbon pipeline company is resubmitting its permit application to the state’s utility regulator.
The move comes after voters overwhelmingly rejected a legislative proposal to help streamline permitting such projects.
Summit Carbon Solution’s pipeline project was rejected last year for failing to follow county ordinances where it wanted to pass through. Company officials say its planned major reroutes in Spink, Brown, McPherson and Lincoln Counties—along with several micro adjustments.
“We’ve taken the time—the last, basically, year, and spent a good deal of time working with landowners and farmers trying to find a route that can best accommodate all the stakeholders on our line," said Lee Blank, CEO of Summit Carbon Solutions. "It’s taken us a bit. We’ve worked really hard and very granularly to find an accommodating route. We always intended on reapplying. It took us over a year to get there.”
Blank said the company adjusted the proposed route onto property owned by more willing landowners.
The 2,500-mile pipeline proposal crosses five mid-western states, including 700 miles in South Dakota. It will transport carbon dioxide from 57 ethanol plants—including 14 in South Dakota—to North Dakota for underground storage. Gevo, the proposed biofuel company making sustainable jet fuel in Lake Preston, will also tap into the pipeline.
It’s a possible way of reducing emissions that lead to climate change and can help win federal tax credits.
Voters recently rejected law would have shifted the burden from companies to counties to prove their carbon pipeline ordinances are reasonable.
Officials with Dakota Rural Action, which is opposed to the carbon pipeline project, say the group will continue to fight with directly affected communities.
“Just to ensure no risk or liability is shifted onto the public for the sake of Summit’s private profit," said Chase Jensen, an organizer with Dakota Rural Action. "I think the outcome of RL21 shows that South Dakota trusts our local governments to regulate these projects. So, Summit's new route and application is going to be very telling whether they heard that message, or whether they’re going to continue trying to ram it through the exact same place they had previously planned.”
Wednesday morning, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments related to Summit’s pipeline and Iowa county zoning ordinances.
