Federal Grant Boosts Beginning Farmers

Here's more federal money for John Thune and Kristi Noem to send back to Washington: my friends at Dakota Rural Action just won a $132,200 two-year grant to give new farmers a leg up:

The Farm Beginnings program provides participants the opportunity to learn from local farmers about farm management issues like Whole Farm Planning, Financial Planning, Marketing, Business Planning, and Connecting with Resources. Beyond the formal classes, the course also provides opportunities for networking between beginning and established farmers, the chance to engage in mentorship or apprenticeships if desired, and the chance see sustainable practices being implemented on local farms during the course's farm tours and skills sessions.

...DRA's Farm Beginnings program is funded by the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA, Grant #2010-03066 ["DRA Gets Grant from Farm Beginnings," Madison Daily Leader, 2010.11.23].

Oh, that darn federal government, spending money to help small farmers and preserve South Dakota's way of life....

DRA Energy Workshops Saturday in Brookings

Hey, want to see a straw bale house? Want to learn about building one? Or would you be interested in some other practical ways you can save energy and money?

Then come to the Straw Bale House at McCrory Gardens in Brookings this Saturday, August 14, for an education fair and workshops on energy efficiency and renewable energy. I'm on a Dakota Rural Action committee that is helping stage the event, so I'm happy to invite you all to come learn how we South Dakotans can rely on our own resourcefulness to save energy and even make some of our own.

Among the speakers is Madison's own Don Amert, who will talk about what he's learned as he has researched building his own wind turbines. Come listen to our speakers, come check out the informational booths, come ask questions... and come get free ice cream!

The DRA press release has some more details (complete with sparkling quotes from me and fellow DRA member Donna Hess). The event runs from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. Current forecast for Saturday: partly cloudy an 79°F. Lovely day to stroll in the park and fill your head with good energy ideas! See you Saturday!

Dakota War College: All "War", No "College"...

...and not much defense of "Dakota"...

Some days Pat Powers is just so full of bull, I don't know where to start. Fortunately, others do. Here are today's big three proofs that Dakota War College will say anything, regardless of the truth, just to cheer the right-wing rah-rah section and avoid discussing actual issues:

1. Where Pat Powers manufactures mewling over Democrats having the integrity to question business dealing involving another Democrat and then resorts to the usual mindless ad hominem, David Newquist tears into the real reasons for the controversy surrounding SDSU President David Chicoine's appointment to the Monsanto corporate board:

The professors who work under President Chicoine must abide by a policy in regard to their outside work and consultation. It is:

Professional employees should avoid entering into outside employments, occupations or endeavors for profit of any kind that may reasonably be thought to influence the decisions that they make in their capacity as Board employees, the degree of thought and effort that they devote to their responsibilities as Board employees or, in any other manner, the loyalty and diligence with which they pursue the best interests of the Board and of the students and citizens who rely upon the Board and its employees. [South Dakota Board of Regents Policy 4:35.B]

State Representative Bernie Hunhof and State Senator Frank Kloucek have raised the issue stated in this policy in regard to President Chicoine. The policy is based upon the fact that academic work and corporate interests are often in conflict. The conflict is that academic research and teaching when conducted with full academic freedom and integrity does not always produce results that will serve corporate interests [David Newquist, "Monsanto State University and the Sacrosanct State of Sanford," Northern Valley Beacon, 2009.10.26].

Dr. Newquist asks honest questions here, as do legislators Hunhoff and Kloucek, about the consistent application of Regental policy and the academic integrity of South Dakota's biggest university. Mr. Powers spreads political gossip.

2. Mr. Powers doesn't mind corporations eroding SDSU's academic autonomy, but boy, let a SDSU president and some Democrats meander onto the campus green to call for a little social justice, and he's ready to call out the shock troops (all three who showed up, with signs). Mr. Powers manufactured all manner of sturm und drang over the mostly Democrat-organized health care rally on SDSU's Sylvan Green last week. Badlands Blue dissects Dakota War College's selective memory and backpedaling sophistry... not to mention narcissism, as the moral of the story in DWC's world is that he's a special little blogger for obviously getting under the Dems' skin. Never mind that he wins this glorious victory by getting the story wrong.

3. I'll tackle today's pièce de resistance: Mr. Powers joins purported journalist Bob Mercer in misrepresenting the legal efforts of Dakota Rural Action to challenge TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline before the PUC next week. Mr. Mercer continues to portray Dakota Rural Action as failing to meet deadlines and, today, refusing to answer official questions. Mr. Powers happily piles on, spinning a fantastic yarn (more like a meager thread) about Dakota Rural Action running away from answering questions under oath. (Let's not forget, it's TransCanada that has questions to answer, as it's TransCanada that wants to dig another giant trench across our state, wreck more farmland and roads, and create another giant environmental hazard that they will make us pay to clean up someday.)

Messrs. Mercer and Powers both ignore the unconstitutional nature of the fishing-expedition questions with which the PUC attempted to sandbag DRA. Funny that neither professional journalist Mercer nor defender of liberty Powers have taken the time to address those questions. Must not fit with the narrative they want to peddle.

Mercer and Powers also ignore the dilatory tactics adopted by TransCanada to make discovery an enormous challenge for Dakota Rural Action's lawyers. Instead, Mr. Powers invests his sizable journalistic talent in throwing out a couple cheap, unsubstantiated ha-ha lines about DRA somehow rejecting science. Funny: on the Keystone XL docket, the only folks who appear to be rejecting science are TransCanada, who say the state's own experts on pipelines, wildlife, soil, and water quality are wrong.

I know, the above two links come from Plains Justice, where DRA's lawyer Paul Blackburn works, but that is an important side of the story. And heaven knows you won't hear it from Mr. Powers.

Mr. Powers ends with this claim about a reality of his own making, saying Dakota Rural Action is "more than happy to show up to complain, but they won’t go under oath. Amazing."

Mr. Powers characterizes Dakota Rural Action as cowardly complainers. Dakota Rural Action has stood up to defend South Dakotans' property rights and ag productivity from the predations of a foreign corporation. Even Steve Sibson could drop his partisanship and find common cause with Frank Kloucek and the South Dakota Democrats in standing for South Dakota property rights and environmental concerns over corporate profits. Mr. Powers and his Republican party have lifted one finger to those landowners... and it wasn't a helpful finger.

Mr. Powers seems to be sinking ever further into the "help me! my right-wing worldview has fallen and it can't get up!" crowd. His language appears calculated to further fuel the fires of faux patriots wallowing in the delusion that they fighting to "Take this country back!" from those darned Commies and greenies and fellas in old suits and whoever else they're characterizing as the enemy today.

And while Mr. Powers gossips and gripes, fellow citizens like Bernie and Frank, Peggy and Amanda, and Paul and Kelly ignore the insults and focus on the issues, trying to make South Dakota and America a little better.

PUC Chills Citizen Activism with Burdensome Information Requests

Mr. Mercer notes that Dakota Rural Action has failed to meet another deadline in submitting pre-filed testimony on the Keystone XL pipeline docket. Mercer cites a letter from PUC staff attorney Kara Semmler that says DRA may request postponement of the upcoming November hearing, a change Semmler says may be impossible.

To understand what's taking so long, perhaps we should go back to June and the Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents Ms. Semmler sent to Dakota Rural Action. On June 3, 2009, Semmler, on behalf of the PUC, gave DRA 26 days to submit the following information for HP09-001, the Keystone XL docket. As you read these "requests" (quoted verbatim), ask yourself what relevance each point may have to permitting the Keystone XL pipeline:

1. Describe Dakota Rural Action's business structure.
2. Describe Dakota Rural Action's business relationship with Plains Justice.
3. How many members does Dakota Rural Action have?
4. How many members own property crossed by the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline (herein "pipeline")? List the names and addresses of those members.
5. How many members are located within one half mile of the pipeline? List the names and addresses of those members.
6. How many members will have a pumping station located on his or her property? List the names and addresses of those members.
7. How many members are interveners in HP09-001? List the names of intervener members.
8. Provide a copy of all correspondence from your members regarding this pipeline.
9. Provide all records of telephonic or other verbal communication with members regarding this pipeline.
10. What is Dakota Rural Action's mission statement or goal?
11. Identify any membership meetings or other types of meetings scheduled by or through Dakota Rural Action at which this pipeline was discussed.
12. Provide a copy of any correspondence you sent members or non-members regarding this pipeline. Provide a copy of all mass mailings as well as individually addressed letters. Specify whether the mailings were sent to members only.
13. Provide a copy of all newsletters or other information published or created by Dakota Rural Action regarding this pipeline.
14. Has Dakota Rural Action polled or otherwise communicated with its membership to determine what percentage support and what percentage oppose this pipeline? If so, provide the results.
15. For the past two years, list all legal processes, administrative and otherwise in which Dakota Rural Action has participated.
16. How does Dakota Rural Action determine what legal or other process to become involved [sic]?
17. The applicable applicant burden of proof reads as follows... [see SDCL 49-41B-22]... Specify particular aspect(s) of the applicant's burden of proof for which you intend to provide testimony and evidence. Provide Dakota Rural Action's position regarding said aspect.
18. State Dakota Rural Action's position regarding "terms, conditions or modifications of the construction, operation, or maintenance." See SDCL 49-41B-24 and 49-41B-36.
19. List with specificity the witnesses Dakota Rural Action intends to call. Please include, name, address, phone number, credentials and area of expertise.
20. Do you intend to take depositions? If so, of whom?
21. As an ongoing request, provide Commission Staff with a copy of all data, documentary or interrogatory requests you send any party to this docket along with its complete answer to such request.
    
    —Kara Semmler, staff attorney, Interrogatories and Request for Production of Documents, South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, 2009.06.03

Now I've never been party to a PUC docket, so I can't speak with authority about the normal scope of interrogatories addressed to interveners. I haven't seen the interrogatories the PUC sent to TransCanada, the entity actually seeking to disrupt land and property rights in South Dakota, so I can't compare the burden placed on other parties to this docket.

In its formal response, Dakota Rural Action argues the PUC's interrogatories are a burdensome and occasionally unconstitutional fishing trip. In twenty-plus pages, DRA offers the following objections (I paraphrase):

• Some requests improperly seek private, confidential information.
• Some requests seek information irrelevant to the docket that could not produce evidence admissable in the PUC hearing.
• The PUC fails to offer the "threshold showing of relevance" required by precedent to justify its seemingly extraneous requests that do not touch on "facts related to the Proposed Pipeline or its impacts."
• Quoting from case law, "no overbroad or 'carte blanche' disclosure, unduly burdensome or lacking in specificity, should be allowed."
• The requests in total are "unduly burdensome, expensive, oppressive, [and] excessively time-consuming."
• The disclosure and publication of member names and addresses violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
  
• Disclosure and publication of member information and internal communications have a chilling effect on freedom of association and free speech.

I find the chilling effect particularly disturbing. Suppose you're a member of a group that advocates certain policies in Pierre—Dakota Rural Action, South Dakota Retailers, whatever. Suppose your organization told you it would be recording every call you make to your organization's officials and archiving every e-mail you send for possible publication in government proceedings. I don't think it's a stretch to say a lot of members would avoid calling or writing... or even sending in membership dues.

Even from a practical perspective, the PUC's interrogatories threaten to chill citizen activism. Suppose you're working for a local non-profit advocacy group, or you're just a concerned citizen trying to speak up for your neighbors. In this case, you're busting your chops researching oil pipelines, right-of-way proceedings, environmental and economic data, and other relevant and complicated information. You're spending your spare time—or your spare change hiring a lawyer or two to help you—trying to put together a case that can reasonably compete with the attorneys and experts that a multi-billion-dollar corporation has at its disposal.

In the middle of that process, the state calls and asks you to turn your file cabinets inside out for them. Whether you submit to the request and turn over stacks of private information or work up a solid legal argument to protect your and your neighbors' constitutional rights, your workload just doubled. And every dollar and hour you spend on that task is a dollar and hour you can't spend building your case that permitting the pipeline does not serve the public interest.

Citizen activism is already hard enough. If the PUC can erect further barriers like the information requests it made of Dakota Rural Action, even more citizens and organizations will back away from public activism. That will leave public decision-making all the more in the hands of the well-moneyed and well-lawyered.

While R. Blake Curd and his Tea Party friends are dressing up in tri-corner hats and re-enacting their personal mash-up of the Cold War and the Revolutionary War, and while South Dakota conspiracy theorists like Lori Stacey are fighting the Illuminati, groups like Dakota Rural Action are fighting real battles, against real threats, to protect the rights of South Dakotans against encroachment from big corporations (and in this case, a foreign corporation).

And our own state appears to be sandbagging citizen groups with impractical and unconstitutional legal demands.

What Happens to TransCanada Pipeline After Oil? DRA and PUC Take Long View

Oil won't last forever, not even the goop in the Alberta tar sands. So that big Keystone pipeline tearing up eastern South Dakota and its bigger sister Keystone XL planning to do the same to West River won't always have oil coursing through them. Someday the oil and the operating revenue will dry up, and TransCanada will flip the switch and walk away.

Dakota Rural Action offers a summary of the problems that can arise when pipelines are abandoned:

Once pipelines are no longer in use, the electrical systems that are meant to keep the pipes from corroding are turned off, and pipelines rust more quickly, with the result that large pipelines may weaken and collapse under the weight of vehicles. They may also develop holes that allow soil to fall inside the pipe, forming sinkholes in the soil over the pipeline. Buried pipelines may emerge from the soil creating an obstacle and eyesore. Abandoned pipelines may also need to be removed before construction of buildings, and they can interfere with other development of property. In addition, they may contain crude oil residues that would need to be cleaned up [Dakota Rural Action, press release, 2009.09.22].

So how much will it cost to remove or stabilize Keystone XL when TransCanada abandons it? Would you believe TransCanada has thus far declined to say? DRA asked TransCanada for pipeline abandonment information last month, but, says DRA, "TransCanada did not voluntarily provide this information."

DRA says that Canada is starting to require pipeline companies to set aside money to cover the cost of dealing with abandoned pipelines. The United States, however, has not yet imposed any such requirements. Conceivably, TransCanada could lay its pipe, pump its oil, and then just walk away, leaving us landowners and taxpayers to remove contaminated soil and fill sinkholes. Nice.

Dakota Rural Action members (myself included) find this lack of planning for the future unacceptable. Tuesday's DRA press release includes these comments from South Dakota stewards of the land who can take the long view:

“My great grandfather settled here in 1910. He had a plan and vision to protect and nurture this land so it would be productive for generations to come. That plan has been carried out by my family for nearly 100 years,” said Roger Gunderson, a Dakota Rural Action member who ranches in Harding County. “I find it hard to believe that a company like TransCanada does not have a responsible business plan that it can share with us as to what they intend to do with the pipeline when it is no longer in use."

...“We’re the third generation on our land and we’re about to bring the fourth generation in to join us. As a family who’s ranched on this land for 75 years and taken good care of it, we want to know what would happen once TransCanada stopped using the pipeline. Would they treat the land right? Would we get stuck having to clean up after TransCanada?” asked Sandy and Jacki Limpert, Dakota Rural Action members from Harding County.

DRA asked the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission to take the long view and require TransCanada to do the same. In response, the PUC has indeed voted to compel TransCanada to give more information on its pipeline abandonment plans, as well as "monitoring, maintenance, crude oil composition, and the possible volume of a worst-case scenario oil spill" [DRA press release, 2009.09.23].

Dang—either Dusty Johnson is running for higher office next year, or the PUC is realizing we South Dakotans really do need to make stronger demands of TransCanada to protect our natural resources from the short-term thinking of Big Oil.

Read more on the legal complications of reclaiming abandoned pipeline and rights-of-way: David Howell, "Who Owns Abandoned Pipelines?" Pipeline & Gas Journal, August 2009.

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p.s.: For those of your conservatives who think President Obama and his eco-Marxofascists are determined to destroy America's economy and petro-security, note that the Obama Administration's State Department approved the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline to Wisconsin last month:

While U.S. environmental lobbies such as the Sierra Club were protesting against Prime Minister Stephen Harper's mission to Washington last week – accusing him of “dirty-oil salesmanship” – the U.S. President's new special envoy on energy, David Goldwyn, was in Ottawa telling officials that Canada is a “pillar of U.S. energy security.”

“Part of my message here is that we recognize and value the centrality of Canada's contribution to U.S. energy security,” Mr. Goldwyn, the U.S. State Department's newly appointed co-ordinator for international energy affairs, said after the meetings.

It will be up to Canada, he said, to figure out how it can expand the high-emissions oil sands without exceeding targets in greenhouse-gas reductions, either by reducing emissions in other sectors or developing new technology [Campbell Clark, "Alberta's 'Dirty Oil' Suits U.S. Security," The Globe and Mail, 2009.09.24].

Looks like I've got some convincing to do even in my own party.

PUC Gives DRA Two Weeks to Dig on Keystone XL

Small victory for my friends at Dakota Rural Action: the Public Utilities Commission has cut them some slack and given them two extra weeks to gather information and file testimony in the Keystone XL permit process. TransCanada has been dragging its feet in the discovery process, stalling, filing objections, sandbagging DRA's lawyers by dropping a couple big boxes of documents on their doorstep just before the original PUC filing deadline of September 8. The PUC gave DRA two weeks, but left the door open for DRA to request further extensions if TransCanada keeps pressing procedural issues. The PUC will also consider extending TransCanada's rebuttal timeframe.