A judge on Wednesday, Oct. 19, declined to rescind permits for a custom butcher shop in northeast Sioux Falls, which is the current focus of the ongoing debate over a proposed pork processing plant on the site.
The hearing before Circuit Judge Sandra Hoglund Hanson was the second in as many weeks regarding the butcher shop that Wholestone Farms is building near the Benson Road exit on Interstate 229. Last week, Hanson allowed the group opposed to Wholestone’s plans the chance to file an amended complaint in the case, shifting the legal parameters of the discussion.
But in the second hearing on Wednesday, she ruled that deciding the case would require a full trial with the opportunity to call witnesses and present evidence, rather than an abbreviated hearing. That pushes any further legal action to after the Nov. 8 election, when voters will decide whether to approve a ban on any new slaughterhouses within city limits.
The result of that vote will determine what legal options may be available to Wholestone’s opponents.
“The election can go forward and the voters can pass it or not,” Hanson said. “It’s not appropriate for the court to stick its foot in that door.”
Smart Growth Sioux Falls gathered signatures to put the slaughterhouse ban on the ballot.
In the meantime, Wholestone began building the butcher shop on the site, contending the small facility meets the definition and therefore could expand into a much larger plant capable of processing up to 6 million pigs per year.
The city of Sioux Falls issued several permits for the butcher shop, including allowing occupancy of the building on Oct. 7.
Smart Growth argued those permits violated a state law that restricts actions by government bodies when a voter referendum is on the ballot. At issue was an apparent contradiction in how the law applies to referendums versus initiatives.
Referendums are when citizens seek to overturn the action by a government body, such as the legislature or city council.
Initiatives are issues put on the ballot by citizens to enact a law, which is what Smart Growth has done regarding slaughterhouses.
The lawsuit, filed by Smart Growth, sought to stop the City of Sioux Falls from issuing any permits for the butcher shop and to rescind several issued after the ballot question was approved in July.
Smart Growth had claimed victory following last week’s hearing, saying Hanson’s statements from the bench stopped the permitting process. Wholestone maintained that, in fact, the judge had not issued any ruling regarding the permits and they would continue work toward opening the butcher shop.
“Nothing the city did at this point is in violation of the law. Nothing that Wholestone did, at this point, is in violation of the law. We will decide that later,” Sean Simpson, general counsel for Pipestone Holdings, the company working with Wholestone to develop the plant, said after the hearing.
If voters defeat Smart Growth’s initiative on Nov. 8, the question of whether or not the butcher shop qualifies as a slaughterhouse won’t apply. However, if the voters approve the ban on future slaughterhouses, then it’s likely that issue will be decided in court.
“This whole butcher shop wasn’t concocted until after Smart Growth had started with its ordinance to get signatures,” Brendan Johnson, a Sioux Falls lawyer representing Smart Growth, said following the hearing. “The entire idea behind the butcher shop is to cloud the issue for voters. Whether that’s going to be effective or not, I guess we will have to wait until election day to see.”
Simpson said more legal action is likely regardless of the voter’s decision.
“I suspect that whatever happens we’ll be back here,” he said. “There are certain individuals in town that don’t want us and I think what we tried to do was follow the law. They’ll find a way to frustrate us again.”
Simpson was referring to Jeff Broin, the founder and CEO of POET, the biofuels company based in Sioux Falls.
POET and the Broin family are major contributors to the Smart Growth campaign committee. POET’s headquarters and a house owned by Jeff Broin are within about a mile in either direction of the Wholestone site.
Smart Growth argues that the city does not need another slaughterhouse, pointing to the legacy of the Smithfield Foods pork plant near Falls Park. They say the potential for water and air pollution and the increased traffic in the area are the primary reasons that voters should put the ban in place.
It’s not Wholestone or the plant itself that opponents object to, but rather the location within city limits.
Johnson has argued in both hearings that issuing permits for the butcher shop has clouded the issue for the election because voting is already underway.
“The subject matter of the ordinance is slaughterhouses and when voters started voting on this there was unquestionably one slaughterhouse,” he said. “What they are trying to do is expand that by the final day of voting. I don’t think that works. We will have to have a trial on that issue I guess.”
