Jared Bossly stands with his arms crossed as fellow landowners stand with him in solidarity in the Brown County Courthouse basement after a court hearing on May 31, 2023, in Aberdeen, South Dakota. (Photo by Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
A South Dakota couple want an Iowa carbon pipeline company to pay them for surveying their land against their will.
Jared and Tara Bossly, of rural Aberdeen, filed a trespassing lawsuit this week in Brown County against Summit Carbon Solutions and a handful of affiliated companies they say acted as agents of the company.
That Iowa-based company hopes to build a multi-state underground pipeline to collect carbon dioxide from ethanol plants for transport and sequestration. Fierce opposition to the project by some South Dakota landowners helped spur the ballot box repeal of a law seen as too friendly to pipeline companies in 2024 and to the passage of a law barring the use of eminent domain by carbon pipeline companies this year. Summit has also been denied a permit by South Dakota’s Public Utilities Commission.
Eminent domain is the right to access private property for projects that benefit the public, with compensation determined by a court.
The Bossly family, whose land was included in Summit’s original pipeline path, have been vocal opponents of Summit since 2022. The family was among several to sue Summit in an attempt to block it from using eminent domain to survey land or use it for the pipeline project.
The landowners won at the South Dakota Supreme Court level in August of 2023.
Court ruling complicates carbon pipeline company’s push for land
Two months before that, however, Summit arrived at the Bossly property to survey it. At that point, a circuit court judge had twice issued rulings allowing such surveys to take place, but the landowners had an appeal pending before the state’s high court.
In the Bosslys’ new lawsuit, the family says Summit’s actions on the day of the survey amounted to trespass because the company knew of the pending appeal.
The lawsuit says Jared Bossly was a “prisoner on his own land” as the surveying took place in June of 2023, because private security guards and sheriff’s deputies prevented him from being within 300 feet of the surveyors.
“I would never want anyone else to feel that way on their own land,” Bossly said in a press release on the lawsuit. “We are bringing this case in hopes a Brown County jury will do justice by finding Summit and the other defendants liable for what they did.”
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages for the June 2023 surveying, for what the case says was permanent property damage from drilling and surveying. The Bosslys are alleging the company trespassed, acted as a nuisance, and was negligent in training its employees.
The Bosslys are also seeking damages based on a visit to the Bossly farm in May of 2023, a day on which they say company representatives unlawfully entered an outbuilding while Jared Bossly was away and frightened his wife Tara Bossly by hollering into their house while she was inside taking a shower.
A representative from Summit said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
Ed Fischbach, another vocal pipeline opponent who lives near the Bosslys, arrived at the Bossly farm before Jared on the day of the June survey. He said he hopes the case will “send the message that what Summit has done is wrong.”
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