The Eminent Domain Situation in South Dakota - Why It Matters to ALL Land Owners
Have you ever noticed the guilty are the least affected by their actions?
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When Will You Take A Stand for Your Liberty?
Though you may think you are not affected by what is going on in South Dakota, then we have to ask when will you fight for your freedom?
When will you defend your Liberty?
At your door step when most other communities have already forfeited their freedoms and liberty, thereby providing a weak resistance overall to a greedy corporation such as what Big Pharma has just done for the last 3 years?
Or will you fight for your freedom and Liberty when ANY corporation infringes on either or both and present a unified, educated force that must be reckoned with?
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
That’s from our Constitution, if you need a reminder…
Our whole Constitution limits the power of government and places the importance of that power to be in the hands of We the People - not corporations, not local organizations, not other jurisdictions, not foreign powers… and that is exactly what has been happening for way too long…
What Is This All About?
A 1,400-mile pipeline, to be built by Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, is designed to transport carbon dioxide under high pressure, produced by ethanol and biofuel refineries, for burial in North Dakota - the goal is to reduce the region’s carbon footprint to protect the environment.
Summit Carbon Solutions investors include Continental Resources, TPG Rise Climate, Summit Agricultural Group, Tiger Infrastructure Partners, and SK Group.
SK Holdings, one of the largest engineering firms in South Korea with reputed ties to the Summit Carbon project, agreed to pay $68.4 million in criminal fines after pleading guilty to defrauding the U.S. Army in June 2020.
“SK paid millions of dollars to secure contracts with the Army and submitted false claims to conceal those illicit payments,” Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division wrote in a June 10, 2020, statement.
Benczkowski added, “Companies like SK—which withheld and destroyed documents, attempted to persuade a witness not to cooperate, and failed to discipline any responsible employees—will pay a price.”
The pipeline reportedly has more than 400 private and foreign investors, but Summit Carbon Solutions has refused to make them all public.
Summit Carbon Solutions is a subsidiary of agribusiness operator and investor Summit Agricultural Group.
On Feb. 18, 2021, Summit Agricultural Group announced the creation of Summit Carbon Solutions to address the “global challenge of decarbonization by developing the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project.”
How Much of Our Atmosphere Is Carbon Dioxide?
Let’s step back a bit as this project seems to be very idealist and not very practical to many who know much of anything about Earth Science…
3%?
5%?
8%?
The correct answer is 0.04%
It was 0.03% and has recently been recorded at 0.04%
We’ll get into more of this shortly.,..
Is the Average Earth Temperature Increasing?
Most certainly - but that is where the pseudo-scientists want you to stop asking questions as the next correct question is…
Instead they will point to other factors that they say are contributing to the temperature increase using post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies to justify their beliefs all while ignore what has been going on all around time (aka evidence-based facts)…
From What Is the Temperature Rising?
What is not mentioned in any narrative or debate concerning the status of our environment is the very cold temperatures the northern hemisphere experienced what has been called ‘the Little Ice Age’ from the early 1700s to the very late 1800s.
It was cold enough to freeze the New York harbor 3 times (1720, 1780, and 1821). The British troops were put on high alert during the American Revolution when the Hudson River in the Upper Harbor froze solid (there were rumors of an attack by American soldiers ready to march across the ice from Staten Island). [link / archive | link / archive], which also froze recently in February 2015 [archive]
But That Was Before the Industrial Revolution
Yes, and? Do you want to be right? or truthful? As anyone who knows how to debate, being truthful means you are right, however being right does not necessarily mean you are being truthful.
Where you focus is where you end up - keep focusing on a small part of the problem and you miss the entire problem, resulting in a band-aid on a much grandious problem.
That is, IF there is a problem - we are not the first civilization to create a problem that will have later civilizations wondering just what the heck they were thinking.
Heat waves are no more common than they were in 1900…
Hurricane activity is no different than it was a century ago…
Floods have not increased for the 70 years…
Ice caps on Greenland, the Arctic and Antarctica are the same as they were 80 years ago…
And we’re STILL waiting for the 2006 prophecies of Al Gore to come true…
Anyone listening exclusively to the MSM will NOT know most of this as it is not the narrative they have been told to push - Mostly controlled by Gannet, who is owned and controlled by the elitists..
Most fail to learn that computer modeling is very questionable, especially when used with something so diverse as our climate - one solar flare can literally send every numb-nuts pseudo-scientist scurry back to their computer to rehash everything..
Same for one sizeable volcanic eruption…
The very nature of science is to ask questions - instead, theses fake intellects are making statements that they want you believe.
Why?
It’s all about the money…
Back to South Dakota and Eminent Domain
South Dakota farmers are banding together against the CO2 pipeline project being forced upon them by Summit Carbon Solutions.
There are 5 Midwestern states involved, not just South Dakota - Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and North Dakota are also targeted.
Having a farm or ranch requires MILLIONS of dollars in investment and most farms and ranches are multi-generational. Starting up a small 4000 acre farm or ranch would require near 15 million just to buy the land. You would still have to buy cattle (at near $2 a pound), seeds, hay, run electricity everywhere, develop a fuel storage site, purchase very reliable equipment as well as a pickup truck and ATV… And at 4000 acres, you would be doing most of this by yourself as your expenses would not permit hired hands.
We know as our family had owned a farm - 36 sections big (there are 365 acres in a section, you do the math).
As for Summit Carbon, the would have commented that they could not commit to day not to use eminent domain on these that do not want their project - in other words, it’s there way, or the highway.
That’s NOT what America, nor freedom, nor what Liberty is about - it this not what those buried in Arlington National Cemetery and military cemeteries elsewhere fought and died for either.
Summit Carbon sent a letter out in July 2021 notifying farmers being affected by their project and as of today there are 81 eminent domain lawsuits in 10 South Dakota counties who are refusing to comply with Summit Carbon’s demands.
And Summit Carbon is doing all this without a permit.
Where is the State government in all this?
img cr: A sign near South Dakota farmer Ed Fischbach’s property warns against surveyors and pipelines on June 10, 2023. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
South Dakota Congressman Karla Lems, a Republican, said the pipeline project takes advantage of legal loopholes in the state’s eminent domain law (SDL 49-7-11 [archive]) which states,
“Any pipeline companies owning a pipeline which is a common carrier as defined by 49-7-11 may exercise the right of eminent domain in acquiring right-of-way as prescribed by statute.”
Summit Carbon filed a project permit with South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission, which will decide in September whether to allow the pipeline to move forward or not.
Lems says Summit Carbon appears to have the right to conduct land surveys on private property within the proposed construction area with 30 days’ notice.
However, in many of those cases surveys have been “invasive” and, in some instances, accompanied by armed guards.
“They say they’re using the carrot - we’re going to give you so much for your land,” Lems told The Epoch Times. “On the other hand, they’re holding a gun, saying if you don’t do this, we will take your property.”
South Dakota House Bill 1133, which Lems was the lead sponsor, sought to define a “commodity for the purpose of qualifying as a common carrier.”
“A common carrier is a person or a commercial enterprise that transports passengers or goods for a fee and establishes that their service is open to the general public,” according to LII, a nonprofit legal publishing group based at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York.
“A private carrier, on the other hand, is a person or a commercial enterprise that only agrees in particular circumstances to transport passengers or good. Private carriers differ from common carriers because they don’t establish that their service is open to the general public.”
HB1133 holds that “a company transporting carbon dioxide, by pipeline, is not a common carrier.”
Per Lems, “We need to redefine commodity. This is not even a permitted project in our state. And yet they can come in and by the power of eminent domain serve condemnation on these people.”
The bill passed in the House but died in a Senate committee. Similar measures in North Dakota and Iowa also failed, she said.
On April 17, Lems and 21 other state lawmakers penned a letter to South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, asking for her support to stop the “undue attack on the private property rights of our citizens [which] is an affront to the South Dakota Constitution.”
“The CO2 pipelines continue to forge ahead, embracing the World Economic Forum goal of net zero by 2050. However, we in South Dakota live by a different set of rules,” the letter said.
Why Is All this Happening?
Per South Dakota Congressman Brandei Schaefbauer (R), “It’s not just farmland; it’s anything you own. It’s happening [in Brown County] because a judge said you can go on land without interference.”
What Schaefbauer left out is that the judge can be contested - by We the People.
NO judge, no court, not even the Supreme Court has the last say, that belongs to We the People.
The people of South Dakota are stepping up - will the people of Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, and North Dakota do the same?
For South Dakota, they have to as their governor has washed her hands of the matter - a matter on which she ran for office.
The only question many are now asking given Kristi Noem’s lack of leadership in this matter is who got to her?
Or are her true colors now coming out?
EVERY American should be making their voice heard as if Summit Carbon is doing this in 5 States, only an idiot would believe it won’t arrive to their front steps.
If not by Summit Carbon, but by another corporation…
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