S.D. energy boom: too much, too soon?
MITCHELL — As South Dakota continues an energy boom that began a decade ago, Don Carr watches from afar and says this state’s residents may be getting in too deep too fast.
Since the ethanol boom began a decade ago, South Dakota has become home to 16 ethanol plants.
The state was once home to only a handful of individual wind turbines, but since the construction of the state’s first large wind farm in 2003, four large wind farms have been constructed with at least another three under way or scheduled for construction. In the past 18 months, the amount of wind power in South Dakota has increased by 700 percent, producing approximately 285 megawatts of wind production capacity.
TransCanada, a Canadian oil company, is at present constructing its Keystone pipeline through the eastern portion of the state on its way to refineries in Oklahoma and Illinois.
Another TransCanada line, the Keystone XL, is proposed to be buried in central and western South Dakota.
The proposed Hyperion project may eventually see a huge oil refinery constructed in the extreme southeast corner of South Dakota, near Elk Point.
Energy proponents proudly note the quick development the state has seen, landowners are collecting payments from use of their property, and public entities such as school districts will get some of the collected tax revenue.
But some people have concerns about the state’s rapid progress of energy development.
“Industry wants things to happen fast (and) a lot of times, environmental concerns and safeguards are an afterthought,” said Carr, press secretary for agriculture and public lands for an organization called the Environmental Working Group. Carr also is a former communications director for the South Dakota Democratic National Committee. “We are constantly fighting the idea that environmental safeguards come second.”
The debate about South Dakota’s energy boom has caused something of a split. Both sides of the issue, and the political spectrum, wonder about the speed with which the state should embrace new energy industries.
Paul Blackburn, staff attorney for Plains Justice in Vermillion, a public interest law center that focuses on environmental issues, said he believes South Dakota’s renewable energy advancements still lag behind neighboring states like Iowa and Minnesota.
“Relative to other states in the region, South Dakota has very little installed wind capacity,” Blackburn said. “South Dakota is lagging way behind some other states in terms of its development.”
Part of that relates to the national economy, he said, but the oft-discussed lack of transmission capacity also plays a role.
“I think that South Dakota should look into allowing more South Dakotans to sell their product via the wires that currently exist to customers in other states rather than having those wires be continually maintained for an exclusive use of fossil fuel interests,” he said.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., also would like to see South Dakota progress faster.
“I would argue that we haven’t moved fast enough,” said Thune, who has long been a key figure behind energy development in the state. “There is so much pent-up opportunity in South Dakota for wind.”
While alternative energy sources like wind may be embraced by many as the future of energy production, opinions on the pace and methods of such advancement differ throughout the state.
South Dakota Public Utilities Commissioner Dusty Johnson said the general consensus is that South Dakota should move faster to bring certain industries — wind farms, for instance — to the state.
The amount of channeled wind power in the state has increased 700 percent in the last 18 months, Johnson said, and work is continuing to lay groundwork for new wind farm projects.
As the process of constructing new wind farms in the state continues, Johnson said he hasn’t fielded many complaints from residents concerned about the rate of progress.
“We haven’t heard a lot from people who think we’re moving too quickly,” Johnson said. “By and large, we’re hearing from people who would like to see the state move faster.”
Johnson said the state was farsighted in preparing for companies interested in erecting wind farms in the area. Legally, wind rights can’t be severed from property rights, nor do property owners legally sign an easement for more than 50 years.
Easement options also expire after five years, which prevents landowners from “signing up with the wrong developer and getting locked up for (numerous) years,” Johnson said.
Members of the Legislature may soon hear from those who feel that such options actually give the landowner too much power over energy companies.
Johnson said developers have recently started to voice concerns about the five-year option expiration, and he expects to see the issue come up during the next legislative session.
“Some developers think that five-year window is too short because it takes so long to build this many massive, multimillion dollar facilities,” Johnson said. “(There) will absolutely be legislation addressing that.”
By AUSTIN KAUS
Mitchell Daily Republic
6 July 2009
Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
Some possibly related stories:
The copyright of this article is owned by the author or publisher indicated. Its availability here constitutes a "fair use" as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law as well as in similar "fair dealing" exceptions of the copyright laws of other nations, as part of National Wind Watch's effort to advance understanding of the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development. For more information, click here.
