News/Commentary

Where’s the GOP? South Dakota farmer able to stall massive green energy land grab … for now

June 1, 2023 | | Print Article

As Americans tear each other apart over transgender rights and live-action mermaids, a green energy company has quietly filed lawsuits against 80 South Dakota landowners in an attempt to claim eminent domain to seize property for a “carbon capture pipeline that will transport CO2 emissions from Iowa to North Dakota to be stored underground.”

Journalist and communications director for the State Freedom Caucus Network Greg Price called the news “the most important story in America” that no one is “talking about.”

“One of the biggest invasions of property rights in American history is currently happening in South Dakota to expand green energy,” Price tweeted on Tuesday.

Summit Carbon Solutions “deploys capital across the agricultural supply chain with a particular focus at the intersection of agriculture and renewable energy,” according to its website.

In late March, Summit boasted that it had “secured voluntary easement agreements with more than 375 North Dakota landowners accounting for 70% of the proposed pipeline route in the state.”

“Landowners across North Dakota and the Midwest have embraced Summit Carbon Solutions’ carbon capture project because they recognize this investment will bolster our most critical economic industries – agriculture, energy, and ethanol,” said Summit Carbon Solutions’ CEO, Lee Blank at the time. “As a company rooted in agriculture, we are incredibly proud to have formed partnerships with thousands of landowners across the Midwest and will continue to work with these individuals and families to drive the future of our ag economy.”

Those landowners in the affected states who aren’t so willing to embrace the plan and are refusing to allow Summit surveyors on their properties are now being threatened with a land grab.


(Video: YouTube)

Price posted video shared with him by Jared Bossly, a farmer in the Mount Rushmore State “whose farm has been in his family for four generations.”

“The men in the video are surveyors from Summit,” Price explains. “They entered his home and shop before going on his farm to survey the land all without permission while only his wife was home. They later falsely accused him of threatening to kill them (he talked to them for 6 seconds on speaker phone about how the sheriff should be there while they do it) and are taking him to court to get a restraining order so he can’t be on his property when they come back.”

“Bossly tells me surveyors from the company have shown up to SD farms without permission, some with armed security guards like something straight out of Blazing Saddles, and have threatened the landowners who haven’t agreed to give up their property,” Price added.

Price blasted South Dakota Republican leadership for “abandoning” Bossly and the other landowners.

“The Republican leadership in South Dakota has also abandoned them. In the last legislative session, bills to protect landowners from eminent domain from Summit failed,” he stated. “Gov. Kristi Norm has done nothing. Why? Because Summit has connections to massive GOP donors.”

“They are also bankrolled by large investments, some of which are foreign, as well as benefit from massive federal tax credits for carbon capture expanded by Joe Biden’s ‘Inflation Reduction Act,'” he added.

The one group that is speaking out about the “unconstitutional” Summit methods is the South Dakota Freedom Caucus (SDFC).

“The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, states that the government may only exercise the power of eminent domain to take private property from citizens if they pay just compensation to the property owners and it is for the public use,” the SDFC states on its website. “The use of eminent domain by a private company is unconstitutional and unacceptable, let alone for something like carbon-dioxide sequestration, or the long-term storage of CO2 underground.”


More than 50 landowners turned up for Bossly’s  Wednesday contempt hearing, and for once, the news was “great.”

“I have great news: Jared Bossly, the South Dakota farmer I tweeted about yesterday, WON his court case today,” Price tweeted.

“We’re very happy for Jared and his family,” the SDFC tweeted.

But the celebration was short-lived, as Bossly and the other 80 landowners “are still facing eminent domain lawsuits from Summit.”

Price urged followers to sign the SDFC petition to “revoke all permits and authorizations allowing the construction or use of eminent domain by such pipelines immediately.”

“We’re urging every South Dakotan to stand with us in saying: ‘NO EMINENT DOMAIN FOR PRIVATE GAIN!'” the group exclaimed.

Online, support for Bossly and the other landowners is high and anger is mounting.

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Melissa Fine
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