Do South Dakota City Dwellers Really Own Their Property?
Big companies appear to be illegally seizing private property, because they think homeowners don't have the savvy or the resources to stop them.
It appears that South Dakota has a significant issue with large companies seizing land from families without easements and through bizarre eminent domain clauses. The problem is impacting both urban and rural residents.
Recently cable/internet companies have been taking swaths of private properties in city subdivisions for new internet transmission cables and electrical companies do similar things. At the same time large consortiums (with foreign ownership) have been threatening to take rural farmland by eminent domain for carbon pipelines that are not financially viable without tax credits.
In the cable/internet situation, Midco and BluePeak are installing cables above and below ground. In most cases, there are no recorded easements in the public records. While South Dakota does allow easements by prescription (if someone uses part of a property and the owner does not remove the infringer for a prescribed period of time the infringer is automatically granted an easement), the prescription only applies to the use at the time the property is purchased.
In other words, if new or different types of cables or lines are installed or there is an increase in the number of cables or lines, the company does not have a prescriptive easement. As a result, many of the cable installations that are occurring in Sioux Falls across private land appear to be illegal.
It is also interesting that Midco, BluePeak, and Xcel could easily use city easements, but are choosing to cross private property. Is this because it helps them reduce costs and maximize profits? I guarantee we would have felonies on our records and would face jail time if we “borrowed” a Midco, BluePeak, or Xcel truck or ran cables across a Midco, BluePeak, or Xcel property because it was cheaper.
If these easements are not legal, one has to wonder why these companies are issued permits and why they can take property without consequence. Is it possible that these companies have some type of “inside deal” with the city, county, or state officials that means the laws that apply to everyone else don’t apply to them?
It seems that one of the biggest problems may be that Midco (revenue of $436 million), Xcel (revenue of $15.3 billion and profit of $1.74 billion in 2022), and BluePeak know it is too expensive for homeowners to hire legal counsel to do anything to protect their property rights.
That means we need to stand together to make sure these big companies follow the law. If you are opposed to companies like Midco, Xcel, and BluePeak installing cables and lines across private properties without recorded easements, please sign the attached petition.
Sign the petition to stop the latest land steal!
Wow. I hadn’t thought of that for city home property!