Garrick Moritz, Gazette
The Gazette had an update with Rick Bonander of Valley Springs over the weekend. It’s been awhile since the Gazette did our first story on the proposed carbon pipelines, back when they were first proposed and promptly opposed by a large group of local ag operators. Since then Bonander has gotten himself elected as a Minnehaha County Conservation Supervisor and has been active in the fight opposing carbon pipelines in our county and statewide. The most recent group he’s become a part of is The South Dakota Property Rights and Local Control Alliance.
“It’s sad to say that it’s been two years now, and we’ve made precious little progress in protecting the landowners and citizens of our state,” Bonander said. “I’ll say this for our legislature, we put forward five bills this session that would have reformed our eminent domain laws in a way that would have protected landowner rights and closed the loopholes the pipeline companies are using to strongarm family farms. With all the things they failed to make any real progress on, they sure managed to kill off all of our bills, one by one. The bill they passed was ultimately not a compromise bill, but a bill that gave the carbon companies everything they wanted while conceding very little to the landowner and citizen. And now that more and more of the ethanol plants are signed on to the deal, they got another strong lobbyist group on their side. This is not to say I don’t support SD Ethanol, I do, and I use it every time I fill up. Ethanol burns cleaner than traditional gasoline and in the coming years we’ll need more ethanol not less. I know many of my fellow ag producers sell corn to ethanol as their primary income, but ethanol production isn’t dependent on these pipelines, rather it’s the reverse. With electric vehicles, big oil wants to squeeze every drop of profit they can, and this is just their latest scheme to fix the game in their favor. And they frankly don’t care if they do it on the backs of South Dakota Farmers, our rights, safety and health simply don’t matter to them. And there’s no proof it’s environmentally favorable either, but it is potentially very profitable, which is all they care about.”
When we asked him why he thought things played out the way they did this legislative session, he said it was very simple.
“Money talks, and these people have a lot of money to spread around, and they certainly have,” he said.
Bonander said that the bill that was passed isn’t very good, and more or less rolls out the red carpet for the pipeline companies.
“Some of the damage was mitigated, but this landowner bill of rights that they’re touting is protection in name only,” he said.
What the law that was passed does do is make it clear under the law that it’s the pipeline companies that are legally responsible for the lines and any leaks that occur, as well as forcing them to provide safety plans and ag impact studies to the public. This, and expiration dates on signed easement agreements, 5 years if nothing is built and 99-year total. Bonander said that these very reasonable standards are the barest of bare minimum standards, and that carbon capture company shouldn’t get points on the board for doing what is minimally legal or moral. He said he shares the statement expressed by many of his colleagues that the 99-year time limit on the easements is just plain insulting, as every landowner in question would be long dead before it expires.
This is why he, and others of his coalition went to Pierre on March 26th to protest the governor signing the bill.
“I’ve no doubt she’ll sign it, because of the large amount of campaign contributions she’s received from big oil, but we’ll be there to let her know our displeasure,” he said. “For a woman who started the narrative of her political career based on landowner rights, I couldn’t be more disappointed in her leadership.”
But this is not the end of the fight, as Bonander and his cohorts at SDPRLCA want to take it to the ballot box.
“We go next to the voters themselves,” he said. “We will have an initiative to go on the next ballot. If we can’t trust the legislature to protect us, we’ll take it to the voters. And we’re going to win that fight, because the people of this state will be with us.”
For more, see the related press release here.
UPDATE 4/1/24: The Gazette mis-labeled Bonander's position. This has been updated.
