outh Dakota’s coalition backing property owners’ rights has been tested in this year’s legislative session. Its members are reflecting on the failure of a proposed constitutional amendment surrounding the issue of seizing private land for public use.

South Dakota garnered some praise for adopting a ban last year on what’s known as eminent domain for carbon-capture pipelines, a major issue in the Midwest. This year, a different plan called for a statewide ballot question on restricting eminent domain property seizures for economic development. A handful of groups aligned with the movement, including Dakota Rural Action, didn’t like the measure because they felt it had loopholes.

Dennis Feickert, president of the South Dakota Property Rights and Local Control Alliance, also was happy to see the plan fail.

“No matter where you live in the United States of America, private property rights are something that you just absolutely have to defend,” he said. “Here in South Dakota, we’ve proved that property rights are important and that we’re not going to give up.”

Supporters of the proposal have said last year’s ban was important, but feel landowners need even more protections. However, groups this year say they felt shut out of the process and were worried troubling amendments would have been added in the final stages. They say they’ll keep working with partners to protect the rights of South Dakotans against what they see as corporate abuse.

Groups such as the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce opposed the latest eminent-domain effort for different reasons, citing the potential impact on economic activity. Feickert said he isn’t firmly against business interests, but added that the public and private sectors need to consider how hard people have worked to own property and hold onto it.

“Somehow,” he said, “we have to stop and look at individuals, look at the families and what they’ve done to get where they are.”

South Dakota’s move last year to enact the eminent-domain ban for carbon pipelines was dramatically felt by a company pursuing a multistate project in the Midwest. Summit Carbon Solutions wants to capture carbon dioxide from ethanol plants and run it through a maze of pipelines for underground storage in North Dakota.