Red-State Communism? South Dakota Landowners Losing Property to Carbon Capture Scam

Think climate communism is relegated to California and the Democrats? Think again. It is rearing its ugly head in the Dakotas and upper Midwest more than anywhere else in the country. Not only are these red-state governments spending a ton on green energy, they are grabbing private property for the “carbon capture and sequestration” scam to build pipelines and caves underground, not to allow oil and gas to flow, but to magically capture carbon – all for a lie. Where is the outrage?

Thanks to the federal and state governments monopolizing the public square to perpetuate the carbon climate lie, companies like Summit Carbon Solutions have been able to take a maniacally uneconomical idea and potentially make it profitable. The endless tax credits, worth as much as $210 billion over the next 15 years, proposed in the “Inflation Reduction Act” last year were the icing on the cake. Now this company, controlled by well-connected GOP donors in the region, is going ahead with construction of a 2,000-mile pipeline, not for oil and gas, but to senselessly sequester carbon out of the atmosphere. It will be routed through Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Minnesota, and North Dakota, supposedly transporting CO2 emissions from Midwestern ethanol plants to North Dakota just northwest of Bismarck, where they will be stored underground in very expensive infrastructure.

Now, imagine losing your land due to private-use eminent domain for a product that brings zero public benefit and is propped up by venture socialist policies built on a scientific lie. In South Dakota, pipelines are designated in statute as common carriers and, as such, have the ability to force eminent domain in the courts without having to prove it’s for the public good.

Conservatives in the South Dakota legislature tried to amend this status and force Summit as well as Navigator CO2’s Heartland Greenway project to be subject to public-use eminent domain laws, but House Bill 1133, after passing the House 40-28, was unanimously killed in the Senate Commerce and Energy Committee.

Without action from the legislature or any effort from the governor to even speak out against the premise of this project, landowners are now receiving petitions for condemnation. Here is a sample of one petition obtained by Blaze Media, which was filed by the Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, to claim land near the North Dakota border in the north central part of the state:

“This is oppression,” said one landowner, who lives next door to one of the sites in McPherson County and has numerous relatives on the hook to lose land. “Invasive surveys have begun, with security watching out for an incident. Condemnation suits have dropped to over 100 individuals and families across the state. None of this has been done in an agreeable manner.” —>READ MORE HERE

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