Landowners' Radio Ad Exposes Dangers of CO2 Pipelines with 911 Call from 2020 Explosion

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 3, 2022

Contact:
Chase Jensen, Dakota Rural Action, 402-290-2624, chase@dakotarural.org   

Landowners' Radio Ad Exposes Dangers of CO2 Pipelines with 911 Call from 2020 Explosion

Chilling audio exposes carbon pipeline dangers to human life, livestock, as well as CO2’s ability to stall vehicles, endanger first responders

Brookings, SD — The South Dakota Easement Team, a landowners’ groups in South Dakota that vehemently opposes the use of eminent domain for private gain to seize their property for proposed carbon (CO2) pipeline projects, on Monday released a radio ad campaign that uses actual 911 recordings from a 2020 carbon pipeline rupture in Satartia, MS to highlight the serious dangers to human life – including to first responders –  posed by an explosive release of toxic CO2 by these highly-pressurized pipelines.

In the radio ad – that will launch across rural markets in South Dakota and other Midwest states where the proposed pipelines are routed – the narrator describes what happened during the 2020 incident in Satartia, MS where a carbon pipeline operated by Denbury Resources ruptured, causing an explosive release of carbon in an immense plume, which was later found by a government-issued report to be toxic for more than a mile from the site of the accident, which was caused by a girth weld failure following a landslide after heavy rain.

The ad then cuts to a 911 recording from a victim who is very concerned and confused about what is happening after her car has stalled – a direct result of the high CO2 concentration making the combustion engine nonfunctional – and her friend is having what she believes is a seizure.

The 911 recording was used with permission from journalist Dan Zegart, who obtained it via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in the course of his extensive reporting on the pipeline accident for his article, “The Gassing of Satartia,” for HuffPost: 

(https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gassing-satartia-mississippi-co2-pipeline_n_60ddea9fe4b0ddef8b0ddc8f)

“Carbon pipelines are coming into South Dakota like a thief in the night before our fellow citizens have become educated on these extremely hazardous, potentially lethal, pipelines. Unfortunately, we do not have the necessary regulations in place to protect us, our families, our communities and our great state of South Dakota,” said Joy Hohn, South Dakota Easement Team member and landowner in Minnehaha County County, S.D.

The South Dakota Easement Team is growing its number of landowner members daily, holding regular meetings to inform landowners about the pipeline projects and the landowners’ legal co-op. Attorneys with Omaha-based Domina Law Group are currently defending South Dakota Easement Team-affiliated landowners in court who have refused to allow pipeline surveyors onto their property. The Domina Law Group will also represent landowners filing as intervenors in state agency permitting processes in South Dakota over the next year. 

In addition to radio ads, landowners with the South Dakota Easement Team have raised funds to purchase billboards along the proposed pipeline routes. 

Online version of the radio ad:
https://youtu.be/14bdGO1Yfrs 

South Dakota Easement Team (SDET)
https://southdakotaeasement.org 

Easement Action Teams LLC 
https://easementllc.org