CANTON — Commissioners in South Dakota’s fastest-growing county punted on four carbon dioxide pipeline ordinances on Christmas Eve, opting to let their planning staff and two new commissioners start from scratch in the new year.

The Lincoln County Commission has wrestled with its approach to carbon pipelines for about two years. Several counties in South Dakota have passed ordinances restricting underground carbon pipelines so strictly that the company proposing a carbon capture pipeline through South Dakota, Summit Carbon Solutions, says it would be impossible to fully comply with all the local requirements and still build the project. The company has also applied for a state permit, which is under review.

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The project is a $9 billion pipeline to carry pressurized carbon dioxide from ethanol plants in Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and Nebraska to an underground sequestration site in North Dakota. The company hopes to cash in on federal tax credits available for activities meant to mitigate the impact of climate change, in this case by keeping some of the heat-trapping gases produced in the ethanol production process from reaching the atmosphere.

Lincoln County is not one of the counties with stricter rules for carbon pipelines than Summit would prefer, though the controversial project has animated discussions about the issue and likely impacted the results of the most recent county commission elections.

Two commissioners, Jim Jibben and Mike Poppens, lost their primary elections to anti-pipeline candidates, one of whom appeared in the commission chambers Tuesday to voice her concerns about the four ordinances up for possible passage.

“I’m opposed to all of them,” said incoming commissioner Betty Otten, who also accused the current commission of being too cozy with Summit to be trusted to make decisions on the matter.

Back to the drawing board

Lincoln County commissioners opted last year to study the options for regulation. An ad-hoc study committee offered suggestions to the planning commission, which held public hearings on the options following the November election.

A state law dubbed the “landowner bill of rights” by its sponsors was on the November general election ballot thanks to a petition drive by pipeline opponents who felt it didn’t do enough for landowners to deserve that branding. The referred law failed to earn support from voters, with nearly 60% saying no. 

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The four ordinances up for possible passage on Tuesday were the result of the planning work and public hearings, Planning Director Toby Brown told the commission. Commissioners were meant to pick one, as each would set a different set of guidelines and conflict with one another if passed together.

The first and second options would have put planners in charge of deciding if a carbon pipeline project would qualify as a permitted land use. The planning commission did not recommend commissioners pass those. 

The third would have required carbon pipeline companies to seek conditional use permits, which would open up a public hearing and the chance for opponents to challenge the county commission in court if its members voted to give Summit a permit.

The fourth would have barred pipelines in agricultural areas, but allowed them in areas zoned as industrial. With that option, the company could ask the commission to rezone the entire narrow strip of land under which the pipeline would run as industrial land. Voters would be able to refer the commission’s decision on the rezone to a public vote.

Vote faces pushback

Every Lincoln County resident to offer public comment on the ordinances Tuesday asked the commission to send the ordinances back to the planning commission, but not before telling them they’d rather not talk about them until next year. 

“This is too important, it’s been too long, and I just think it’s prudent that we have the new commission in there,” said Scott Montgomery of Fairview, echoing the words of half a dozen others in the commission chambers.

Lincoln County’s failure to pass an ordinance is at least partially the result of actions one commissioner took before debate started. Poppens took a deal with Summit for access to his own property, and he’s recused himself from every debate and vote on pipeline regulations. 

On Tuesday, though, Poppens did cast a vote, and it was to keep the pipeline discussion on the agenda. 

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Commissioner Tiffani Landeen had asked for a vote to table the discussion until January, when Poppens and Jibben will be replaced by the candidates who ousted them in the June primary. Landeen said the timing of the discussion and the weight of the issue for citizens combined to convince her that debate should happen after the new commission is seated.

Poppens, in his last vote before leaving the body, said no.

“Residents of the county, my family personally, we are impacted. So I’m not going to discuss the ordinance, but I am against tabling it. It’s an important issue,” Poppens said.

Also opposed to tabling were Jibben and Joel Arends, who pushed his fellow commissioners to pass an ordinance, ideally one with a 500-foot setback required between the pipeline and homes, schools and businesses. Members of the public had taken time out of their holiday week to offer their opinions, he said, so they ought to be able to do that.

He also said that the county has already delayed making a decision, and that leaving it up to the next commission would be a dereliction of duty. 

“We’re in some kind of circular doom loop here,” Arends said. “We just have to put our feet down and say ‘we’re elected to office, we’re accountable, this is what it’s going to be.’” 

But Commissioner Jim Schmidt said voting on the ordinances during a day many might be unable to attend the meeting wouldn’t sit well with him.

“Is it an encumbrance for you to come back? Maybe. I’m sorry for that, but I think there’s a lot more that we would hear from when it’s not Christmas Eve,” Schmidt said.

After deciding to take testimony and hearing every citizen who spoke say they disliked all four ordinances, commissioners took their final vote of 2024.

Landeen made the motion to send the ordinances back to the planning commission, on which she serves as the commission’s representative.

No one in the room liked the ideas on offer, said Landeen, a Sioux Falls attorney and former Turner County state’s attorney, whose own take on the ordinances was that they were vague and unworkable. The last option might seem the most palatable to opponents, as it offers the chance to vote down the commission’s choice. But even there, she said, she doesn’t like the idea of having “this weird strip” of light industrial land running through the county for no reason but to make a pipeline possible.

“The language of these ordinances doesn’t do what anybody needs them to do,” Landeen said.