FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 21, 2024
CONTACTS:
Chase Jensen, Dakota Rural Action, 602-277-3730, chase@dakotarural.org
Vote NO on Referred Law 21 Radio Ad Exposes Dangers of CO2 Pipelines with 911 Call from 2020 Explosion
Brookings, SD – October 21, 2024 – Dakota Rural Action, a South Dakota-based organization that has been engaged in a multi-year campaign to ensure that the potential safety, environmental, and economic consequences of the proposed carbon dioxide pipeline are thoroughly vetted and that the voices of impacted citizens are at the forefront of permitting decisions, on Monday launched a radio and online video ad campaign to urge South Dakotans to vote “No” on Referred Law 21 on their November ballot.
Paid for by Dakota Rural Action, the ad 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 on rural South Dakota radio stations on Monday, and include a video version that will be promoted on Facebook and YouTube – the narrator describes what happened during the 2020 incident in Satartia, MS. A carbon pipeline operated by Denbury Resources (now a unit of Exxon) ruptured, causing an explosive release of CO2 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 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 the late journalist Dan Zegart, who obtained it via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in the course of his extensive reporting on the pipeline explosion and impacts for his article, “The Gassing of Satartia”:
(https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gassing-satartia-mississippi-co2-pipeline_n_60ddea9fe4b0ddef8b0ddc8f) Meanwhile, the video ad displays footage of a test CO2 pipeline rupture, and features a headline from an earlier Denbury CO2 well blowout incident in 2011, where the Associated Press reported that “so much carbon dioxide came out that it settled in some hollows, suffocating deer and other animals.”
”Subjecting human and animal life to a dangerous CO2 pipeline so a private company and a few individuals can profit from a subsidized boondoggle is abhorrent. What happened in Satartia should never be allowed to happen anywhere else. That’s why thousands of friends and neighbors are saying “not here, not anywhere” to Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed pipeline,” said Ed Fischbach, South Dakota landowner impacted by the proposed Summit CO2 pipeline.
“Dakota Rural Action encourages all South Dakotans to vote NO on RL-21. We hope to raise awareness about the dangerous language of the bill, and to remind people of the literal dangers these projects pose to our communities if they are not properly regulated,” said Chase Jensen, senior organizer with Dakota Rural Action.
You can listen to the radio ad below.