SB 196: Nesselhuf's Refinery Bill Gutted; Big Oil Gets Another Free Pass

Attention Big Oil: The State of South Dakota is ready to let you do whatever you want in our state. Bring your pipelines, your refineries, your drilling rigs -- heck, come dump your old rusty barrels along the highway. Our state is so desperate for economic development (which it won't tax) and fossil fuels (which we'll only get a small fraction of, which won't be any cheaper, and which will run out in my lifetime) that it will sacrifice its natural resources, property rights, and sovereign authority to get them.

Today's example: SB 196, Senator Nesselhuf's refinery regulation bill. Senator Nesselhuf had tendered a very sensible and detailed bill laying out specific standards for refineries to follow in their waste emissions and making clear that South Dakota has the sovereign right to set environmental standards even tougher than federal standards.

Then someone (Dykstra?) hoghoused it, replacing 17 pages, 8800 words, with the following:

Section 1. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources shall, by rules promulgated pursuant to chapter 1-26, ensure that any petroleum refinery located in the state complies with adequate environmental standards necessary to protect the state's air quality and water quality.

"Adeqaute" -- that's our state government for you: never striving to be the best, to be the leader; just bumbling along with Midwestern Norwegian Lutheran (I'm part all three, so I can say it) humble insecurity, afraid to step out, afraid to make a stand, afraid we're so inferior that we think big corporations are doing us a favor by moving here and that we don't dare jeopardize their enormous kindness by imposing any sort of regulation on them. "We're just South Dakota," our Legislature is saying. "We don't deserve the right to stand up for ourselves."

What's that you say? "17 pages, 8800 words -- that's an awful lot of regulation. That would hurt business."

Bull. You and I face more regulation when we drive our cars to work or file our income taxes, and we have to do that ourselves. Hyperion and the rest of Big Oil have billions of dollars to pay cadres of lawyers and accountants to handle much more complicated regulations than what Senator Nesselhuf originally proposed. They'd have looked at his bill and chuckled at its simplicity.

Obviously my message isn't getting through (more proof the BNN Influence Index is flat whacked -- or that the SD Blogosphere in general has minuscule influence): we don't have to treat Big Oil with kid gloves. They have trillions of dollars to make and a short time to do it before the oil runs out. They want their pipelines and refineries now so they can cash in before the world wises up or the wells run dry (whichever comes first). If there is some level of taxation and regulation at which little South Dakota can drive the oil companies out of business, Senator Nesselhuf's bill and every other proposed and extant regulation put together don't even come close to that level.

In SB 196, we had a chance to make sure an industry new to our state plays fair and does right by us. In SB 190, we had a chance to ensure to tax pipeline companies and make sure there's money to clean up their mess in case they screw up, go broke, and skip town (at least until Senator Knudson hoghoused it down to paper work and a task force). In SB 138, we have a chance to impose some small guarantee of financial responsibility on the pipeline companies, an effort the Republicans will probably kill just to spite sponsor Senator Kloucek.

At every step, our legislature has made clear that those who see value in protecting our natural resources can expect no support in Pierre when Big Oil comes a-knockin'. It appears our only recourse will be to keep track of who votes how, and then turn these turkeys out in November.

Green Party, field some candidates: I think there are some landowners in Union County and along the James River who would happily put you in office.

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Update 21:10 CST: Some hope: SB 196 got hoghoused again, this time to repeal SDCL 1-40-4.1, the rule that prohibits state environmental regulations more stringent than federal regulations. In other words, SB 196 would now permit us to set tougher standards than Washington demands. And that hoghoused version passed the Senate 35-0.

Whew. I still like Nesselhuf's original bill better, but this is better than nothing. Thank you, Senate.