Maustad said he will run even if it means going up against fellow Republican, incumbent Milton Usted. He said it’s not just the signage portion of the ordinance that he doesn’t agree with. He criticizes much of it as just a boilerplate from the much more urban Lincoln County, with rules to prevent traffic jams and overcrowding, things unlikely, for now, in Union County.

“Common sense tells you, let’s write a common sense law,” Maustad said. “How they’re gonna write it, I don’t have a clue.”

Maurstad credits his protest — that being made to remove anti-Hyperion signs from his property violates the First Amendment — for the county’s announcement earlier this month that it will suspend enforcement of that particular part of the code.

State’s Attorney Jerry Miller said Tuesday that doesn’t mean signs will not be regulated. He said the county’s planning and zoning board will work with the Southeast Council of Governments to come up with an ordinance that is “constitutionally acceptable and enforceable” to replace the parts of the ordinance that he said raise issues of constitutionality.

However Miller said, the Supreme Court has recognized government’s right to regulate signs for safety. He said, for example, while small, low signs may not obstruct visibility near an intersection, a large one may, so the owner can be made to remove it.

“We won’t need to start from scratch,” Miller said recently. “We’re looking at the enforcement portion of our sign ordinance.” He said that includes the restriction of 32 square feet and the requirement that political signs be removed within five days after the election.

To the company’s credit, it does note that that use of the thermal oxidizers were not in its initial preconstruction air quality permit application, but were added later as a condition of receiving that key permit from the state DENR’s Board of Minerals and the Environment, something it accomplished earlier this month after a final hearing before that board in Pierre. 

Hyperion Vice President Preston Phillips said the emissions control devices will add $30 million to the estimated $10 billion cost of construction the energy center in southern Union County. “We know some will say it’s going overboard becasue it’s handling such a small amount of vaopor, but we agree with the state that it’s the right thing to do to protect the gegion’s air quality. Sometimes you go the exta mile, even if it doesn’t pencil out.” Or, apparently, if you won’t get the permit without going that mile.

Hyperion said thermal oxidizers are sometime required in other industrial settings, but none are currently used on hydrocarbon storge tanks in existing refineries.

According to the company, the vapor from the storage tanks will be captured, then transported to the thermal oxidizers via  a complex piping system to the thermal oxidizers, which turn the vapor into carbon dioxide and water.

YUMA, ARIZ. — Hyperion Refining watchers might be interested to know that the oil refinery/energy center the Texas company is planning for Union County may not be the first from-scratch refinery to be built in the United States in more than 30 years, as is oft recited.

Arizona Clean Fuels CEO Glenn McGinnis said Friday that his company is filling in some specifics and wrapping up negotiations with “several investors” to build a refinery near Yuma, Ariz. That project could break ground as soon as late next year, McGinnis said.

On Aug. 20, when Hyperion was granted its preconstruction air quality permit by the state of South Dakota, Hyperion Vice President Preston Phillips said construction would get underway in 2011. That likely would not be in January, due not only to the massive amount of earth-moving involved and the snow and frozen condition of the soil that time of year, but to the reality that no project that big moves as fast as the developers would like it to. Remember, Hyperion once predicted it would have its main air quality permit by September 2008.

Arizona Clean Fuels’ $3.5 billion refinery would process only 150,000 barrels-per-day, of sweet crude from Mexico, compared to Hyperion’s 400,000-barrel daily order of Canadian tar sands crude. But Clean Fuels said as recently as a year ago that it hoped to break ground in early 2009. It took the company a long four years to get its air quality permit. So, as they say, it ain’t over yet.

And, Arizona Clean Fuels started working on its refinery project in 1999. Hyperion began, publicly at least, in 2007. John Kerekex, spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, a year ago called the Yuma refinery project “the poster child for why you can’t build one in this country.” And, he noted, Clean Fuels is in an area where the people want the refinery.

 The Yuma project’s initial site, it turned out, was a just a small fraction of a thousands-of-acres tract that got tied up in court when an Indian tribe sued the federal government over a land transfer deal with a drainage district. The tribe eventually lost its case, but the Arizona Clean Fuels didn’t wait around. It found a new location just outside the contested land’s border and kept working.

Since air quality permits are very site-specific, Clean Fuels had to reapply for its permit. McGinnis the permit is currently in the process of being re-issued by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.

“Field work would not begin before the end of next year,” McGinnis said Friday. “Our expectation is to have it completed in 2013.”

The most recent completion date put out by Hyperion? 2015.

It’s not a race, and almost certainly both project are cheering for one another. But it will be interesting to see if either company gets there on its current timetable.

They argue that Sioux City is twice as close to the site just north of Elk Point, S.D., as is Sioux Falls. And, and since the atomoshpere doesn’t respect state lines, it is Sioux City’s (much dirtier) air quality that should be included in the formula. The total projected pollution would likely prohibit construction of the refinery here, they say, due to federal limits.

 The conversations are a clue that opponents may focus on that perceived fundamental flaw in the permitting process in their continuing battle to defeat Hyperion. That means the Iowa DNR would become involved. Two states’ agencies in the mix means the federal Environmental Protection Agency would likely become involved and perhaps become the ultimate “decider” on the permit. Perhaps.

 Opponents charge that since Gov. Mike Rounds appointed the members of the Board of Minerals and Environment, which will decide whether to grant the air permit, and so they will take their cue from his enthusiastic support for the project and vote 9-0 to grant the air permit. A federal authority may be the only recourse then.

 The board has said it expects to vote at its next meeting, Aug. 20, in Pierre, following what amounts to closing arguments by the company and opposition attorneys, finally ending the contested case hearing requested by Hyperion. The hearing has been spread over parts of three months already.

Cable declined to say Friday whether making the air permit a federal case is their strategy, but said it’s “not a bad ” guess.  Cable hinted the opponents, which include local Save Union County and the Sierra Club, had a new tac in mind after the state Supreme Court decline to hear Cable’s appeal following Circuit Judge Steven Jensen’s ruling in October that Cable failed to show in court that he would suffer more than anyone else in the county from the refinery’s pollution. Therefore, he had no standing to sue the county for granting zoning needed for the refinery, Jensen said.

Opponent Doug Maurstad charged in a recent blog that the BME folks couldn’t even find Elk Point (although they held a public hearing there prior to the formal contested hearing starting up in Pierre), Sioux Falls or Sioux City on a map. He’d like nothing better for them to find Sioux City, though – and get to know the Iowa DNR that has jurisdiction there. 

Stay tuned.

The DVBC took that stand about a year ago and spoke in support of the project before the public hearings on rezoning the 3,292 acres for the project held by the county zoning board and board of county commissioners.

DVBC President Greg Miner said in a statement that the business council wants its members to voice support for the project and to ask the DENR “to objectively evalutate the Hyperion Air Quality Permit and act on it without delay.”

Following the two days of public comment in Elk Point and a tour of the proposed site about seven miles north of there, the BME will hold a trial-like contested case hearing on the air quality permit over two weeks, one each in May and June, in Pierre. There’s no telling how long the board will review the evidence and application before ruling on it.

Hyperion needs the permit before the project can proceed.

Sara Raeburn, spokeswoman for the South Dakota Attorney General’s office, said the board will not announce the format of its public comment sessions or whether it will limit the time alotted to each speaker until the actual event.

Raeburn also said that a transcript of the public comments will be prepared. It will become part of the hearing record and will be considered by the Board.

The answers are coming through the attorney general’s office rather than the DENR because of the contested hearing status of the legal action on Hyperion Refining’s air quality permit. All the information on the issue must come through the attorney general’s office. At least that’s the case when it’s reporters who are asking for it.

Read the full story here.

To hear a two-part exclusive Journal interview, use the audio players below:

The Alberta Federation of Labour commissioned the report, dubbed “Lost Down the Pipeline,”  which found that despite the global recession, energy companies are proceeding with aggressive plans to dramatically expand U.S.-based refining capacity, and American-bound pipeline capacity. 

In its report, the AFL listed U.S. refiners planning to tap into Alberta’s vast oil sands reserves, including Hyperion Refining, which proposes to build a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Union County, S.D.  The Texas-based firm is in the midst of applying for an air permit from South Dakota regulators.

“What our research shows is that American refineries will have the capacity to process all of the expected increase in oil sands output from Alberta,”  AFL president Gil McGowan said. “As a result, unless the Stelmach government steps in much more aggressively than it has, the raft of upgrader postponements we’ve seen here in Alberta will almost certainly turn into permanent cancellations. We’ll be losing literally thousands of jobs down the pipeline.”

The Alberta Federation of Labour commissioned the report, dubbed “Lost Down the Pipeline,”  which found that despite the global recession, energy companies are proceeding with aggressive plans to dramatically expand U.S.-based refining capacity, and American-bound pipeline capacity. 

In its report, the AFL listed U.S. refiners planning to tap into Alberta’s vast oil sands reserves, including Hyperion Refining, which hopes to build a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Union County, S.D. 

“What our research shows is that American refineries will have the capacity to process all of the expected increase in oil sands output from Alberta,”  AFL president Gil McGowan said. “As a result, unless the Stelmach government steps in much more aggressively than it has, the raft of upgrader postponements we’ve seen here in Alberta will almost certainly turn into permanent cancellations. We’ll be losing literally thousands of jobs down the pipeline.”