by Garrick Moritz, Gazette
Usually, because of time and staff constraints, the Gazette staff isn’t able to attend County Planning and Zoning meetings. However, the night of Monday Jan 23rd was a special case, and as one member of the public so eloquently put it, with all the pending projects and expansions in Minnehaha County, the Zoning commission might be wielding more power than the County Commission itself in the near future.
First, the joint planning/zoning board of both Minnehaha County and the City of Sioux Falls hosted their meeting starting at 7 p.m.
The major items of discussion were the granting of one bed and breakfast permit and the denial of another. Petitioner Daniel Brunz and property owner Doug Kooiker were granted their conditional use permit on Ellis Road to allow a bed and breakfast establishment.
There was a very long debate and discussion about a similar permit being filed by Tyler Childress for a property commonly called “The Lookout.” Childress owns and operates a wedding barn and wants to make this property available to clients for short-term rentals.
However, 33 of his 35 neighbors disagreed. They testified that Childress had already been renting this space as a part of his overall business ventures, and that the commissioners could go online right now to see what he was advertising on his website, as well as watch the report from KELO News promoting the new venture. This coalition of neighbors argued that Childress knew what the regulations were and ignored them, and that he only bothered to follow the county’s mandates after these same neighbors filed complaints and argued he shouldn’t be rewarded for that. The County and City of Sioux Falls planning and zoning members at the table were not keen on this. They worried that event hosting was outside the purview of this conditional use permit, and both zoning committees voted to deny the permit. The vote led to some cheering from the gathered assembly.
Joe Kippley, new county commissioner and newly appointed member of the Planning and Zoning commission, said that both these cases were prime examples of why the County needed to look at revisions to their ordinance regarding short term rentals and rental properties in the age of AirBnB and Vrbo.
When the joint session of the Sioux Falls City and Minnehaha County Planning and Zoning body adjourned, the Minnehaha County Planning and Zoning Commission took up their regular meeting.
The first item of contention was the approval of a temporary use permit for an asphalt plant to be used on the construction of I-90’s shoulder. This temporary plant would be located ½ mile east of SD Highway 38 in Benton Township near Hartford.
The two immediate neighbors to the west and north of this location testified against granting this temporary use permit. They said that the asphalt manufactory adversely affected their health, safety and well-being. They said that residents with asthmatic conditions suffered extreme symptoms and migraines. Residents had one incident of livestock death, had to sell livestock to mitigate their animals' suffering, and abandon outdoor activities. Resident Zoe North traveled 1,600 miles to testify at this meeting. She said that she and her husband had to abandon their home because the conditions created by the asphalt plant adversely affected his delicate medical condition, and threatened his life. Neighbors directly to the east said that they had created a list of stipulations/conditions for compromise on the situation, but that the company had rejected them and instead simply offered a cash payment of $2,000 from the company in question. They didn’t feel that was compensation enough for the damage to health, fatigue and loss of property value and asked the commission to deny the request.
Wanting to find a middle ground, the commission deferred motion on this approval until their next meeting, hoping that the parties involved could find some sort of compromise.
The County Planning Commission next approved a conditional use request for Thomas Aesoph and his auto repair shop. Initially they deferred his approval because of neighbor complaints about clutter and street parking. Kevin Hoekman of County Planning said that Aesoph had complied with requests and made good faith efforts to make requested improvements, so the commission approved his conditional use permit.
Next, Scott Anderson, the Planning and Zoning Director for the county, presented a revision to county ordinance that would change how the county handles rental properties, such as Vrbo and AirBnB properties. This Vacation Home ordinance was greeted with general approval by the commissioners who voted to direct that the hearing for the ordinance be set and sent to all county papers for debate and discussion at their next meeting.
Lastly, the Planning Commission had its biggest event of the night, the issue of the Summit Carbon Solutions and Navigator pipelines. This debate was what the majority of the people in attendance had come to see and speak about.
A group of local landowners had brought forth a proposal to the Planning and Zoning commission for them to look and hopefully adopt as county policy. Rick Bonander outlined the Carbon Dioxide Pipeline ordinance. Some of the provisions would include setbacks of 2,500 feet from an occupied residence or 1,000 feet from a livestock enclosure and 1 mile from buildings with occupancies of over 20 and 2-mile setbacks from cities, parks, schools, and the like. It would also require plans for decommissioning said pipelines and emergency planning by the county in the event of leaks, all with no fault falling on the landowners in the event of a leak or rupture.
The planning commission was shown an industry safety video of a test rupture on a pipeline like the ones proposed, save that the ones proposed by Summit Carbon and Navigator are 24-inch pipelines, whereas this video was only for a leak on an 8 inch line. The pressures and spillage from a rupture would be orders of magnitude worse.
Some of the most damning anti-pipeline testimony came from Don Johnson, fire chief for Valley Springs for over 27 years.
“What kind of warning system is going to be in place for a leak?,” he asked. “Nothing as far as I can see. I’ve asked them again and again, and gotten no answers. If a leak happens it could go for up to four miles around the leak and it’s not like you can get in your car and get away, your car won’t run in this stuff. There is no safety precaution I can take, nothing I can do to save my people. No response I could make except for to bring body bags.”
Most of the testimony was just like this, and all of it pretty dire. The landowners said that it was up to the commission to protect the people, as no other entities had stepped forward to do so. According to the testimony, out of state companies were looking to make billions on tax credits and happy to do it on the backs of South Dakotans. They wanted to get these pipelines built quickly before they could be more strictly regulated by the federal government, and could have them grandfathered in.
Though it might be true that no one has yet died from a carbon dioxide pipeline leak in the United States, the landowners stated that around 1,600 people had died in 1986 from a natural leak near Lake Nyos in Camaroon with similar proximital conditions, and that the most recent leak in Mississippi in 2020 had left 45 people hospitalized, many with permanent damage to their health. They also argued that the reason there have been no deaths from these pipelines is that nobody has ever done anything on this scale before, and that South Dakota is the guinea pig to be tested on, or the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Though there was a representative wearing a Summit Carbon Solutions uniform jacket at the meeting, he remained in the back row of the hall, seated and silent throughout the discussion.
Planning and Zoning Director Anderson told the commissioners that the most appropriate thing to do was to give them time to review the proposed ordinance and come back to it again at their next meeting.
