South Dakota Living River Group

		Living River Group - South Dakota
Explore, enjoy and protect the plane

Karen Hall
Thursday, November 29
7:00 PM
North Sioux City Community Center

The Northwest Iowa Group of The Sierra Club in association with the Save Union County Committee announces the next in a series of public awareness workshops concerning the proposed “green” Hyperion Energy Center in Union County. This meeting, per popular request to hold such a meeting in the southern part of the county, will be held in the North Sioux City Community Center located in the Fire Station at 205 Sodrac Drive, North Sioux City, South Dakota, at 7:00 PM CST, Thursday, November 29, 2007, and will feature Karen Hall of Rapid City as the speaker. This workshop will be open to the public as well as the media and will serve to continue an emphasis on refinery related concerns for the entire tri-state area.

There were numerous requests for another presentation by Ms. Hall, a graduate of the South Dakota School of Mines. She is an environmental engineer who worked for many years at the Flint Hills Resources oil refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota and has extensive experience in the environmental processes and issues surrounding oil refining, including human health risk assessment, environmental data review, and environmental management systems. She has also worked with permitting processes and regulatory compliance, and as public liaison.

Ms. Hall’s presentation will begin with a description of the refining process in general. She will also discuss concerns that should be addressed during the permitting process and, finally, will answer questions from those in attendance.

In addition to her work in refineries, Karen was a founding partner in Bostrom Hall Engineering, a Minnesota environmental consulting firm, and most recently worked for the South Dakota National Guard, where she also did statewide environmental compliance assessment and reporting. More recently she has published her first novel, Unreasonable Risk, a thriller about sabotage in an oil refinery, and she is currently working on a sequel set in Lead/Deadwood’s hard rock gold mining industry.

Save Union County is a group of committed residents opposed to locating an oil refinery in their backyards. Save Union County believes that local residents should have a say in what type of industry moves into their neighborhoods. Mega-projects such as this affect residents' daily lives, and the consequences for our children and our children's children are at stake. Please join us in the fight against the 'Gorilla' project.

The Keystone pipeline planned by TransCanada would be built in eastern South Dakota and would go under the Missouri River at Yankton.	Hyperion Energy is planning to build an oil refinery in Union County east of Vermillion.
There are many reasons to buy locally grown foods: 1) you can get to know and trust the producer; 2) all the profits stay and circulate in the local economy; 3) if organic and free-range, the food can be much healthier and better tasting, 4) barrels of oil and gas are not used to transport it from California or a foreign country, and 5) local farmers are more likely to be better stewards of the land. A town of 10,000 can spend roughly $15 million yearly on food products. If only 10 percent of the $15 million is purchased from local growers, $1.5 million would be kept in our local economy. This money could be re-spent to benefit other businesses, the school system, and city and county budgets. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University estimated that Iowa could gain an additional $302 million and 4000 jobs if Iowans ate five fruits and vegetables a day that were locally grown. In addition, there would be enormous health savings on a health diet.
Spirit Mound Photo by Missouri National Recreational River
The Living River Group is part of the South Dakota chapter of the Sierra Club and serves residents in southeastern South Dakota. The group meets on the third Tuesday of each month at 7:00 at the W. H. Over Museum.	You can contact us by emailing Vikki Fix.