Over the weekend local landowners met in Sioux Falls at the Riverview Barn to discuss the proposed carbon pipelines and where the fight to oppose them is going. Rick Bonander lives in rural Valley Springs and is a Minnehaha County Conservation District Supervisor and is running for a seat on the East Dakota Water Development District 4. Bonander was kind enough to give the Gazette a recap of the meeting.

            “It was a pretty productive and informative meeting,” Bonander said. “Obviously everyone who has opposed these pipelines is pleased with the SD Supreme Court ruling that Summit has no right to use eminent domain, and is not a common carrier under SD Law. Obviously, we’re also very much hoping that SD voters vote no on Referred Law 21 in the November election, since that compromise bill in our legislature was a compromise in name only and actually weights the scales in favor of the carbon capture companies and interferes with local control from local government on these issues.”

            Bonander said that the first speaker was Tim Kenyon of Lake County, SD, an engineer who’s spent 45 years working in the pipeline industry.

            “He had a wealth of knowledge and hands on working experience that he shared with us,” said Bonander. “First, the difference between something like natural gas and liquid CO2 is something he made very clear. Often, you’ll hear that argument that, natural gas goes into people’s homes, it’s flammable and dangerous, so what makes this any worse. It’s a matter of degrees of magnitude. Natural Gas is lighter than air, when it leaks it rises up and dissipates at a much safer rate. The liquid CO2 is heavier than air, and it’s cryogenic, they have to cool it down to make it pass through the pipelines and at the pressures they’re talking about it goes from very dangerous to extremely dangerous. Any leak will become a huge leak, with all that destructive force and with high pressure and subzero temperature behind it. You might recall from school science that high pressure and extreme temperatures can be very bad. Tim told us that no pipeline is perfect and that all pipelines leak eventually, and everywhere there is a connection there is a potential leak, and it’s not a matter of if, but when and how much. Imagine if you will a foggy haze, a drifting icy cloud of liquid CO2 turning to gaseous form drifting slowly downwind, hugging the ground and terrain as it goes. Anyone or anything downwind of it is just going to die, and the minimum safe distance, well it could end up being miles wide.”

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