This is a developing story.
PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — Two first-time lawmakers want the South Legislature to ban CO2 pipelines as well as wind- and solar-power facilities from using eminent domain to force access through others’ property.
Republican Sen. John Carley and Republican Rep. Dylan Jordan are the prime sponsors of SB49. They are among a group of new legislators who won election last year as 59% of voters rejected a pending state law dubbed the “Landowner’s Bill of Rights” that opponents said would have made CO2 lines easier to place in South Dakota.
The Carley-Jordan legislation is the first of what could be many attempts this year to give more control to landowners who don’t want CO2 lines running across or near their properties.
Summit Carbon Transport currently has a permit application for a CO2 pipeline pending before the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. The project would collect CO2 from ethanol production facilities in South Dakota and several neighboring states and pipe it to central North Dakota, where the CO2 would be buried underground.
Republican Rep. Jon Hansen, the incoming House speaker, last year introduced a more-limited version of legislation that sought to ban eminent domain for CO2 lines. He narrowly failed in trying to force it onto the House debate calendar. Months later, at least a half-dozen of the lawmakers who had opposed Hansen’s attempt in turn lost their re-election bids in June primaries to challengers who openly opposed CO2 lines.
One of the defeated was Republican Rep. Kirk Chaffee, who ran for the Senate and lost to Carley. Jordan meanwhile was the top vote-getter in a four-way Republican primary for two House nominations and went unopposed in the November general election.
The 2025 legislative session officially opens on January 14.
