Jun. 27--As South Dakota continues an energy boom that began a decade ago, Don Carr watches from afar and says this state's residents may be getting in too deep too fast.

Since the ethanol boom began a decade ago, South Dakota has become home to 16 ethanol plants.

The state was once home to only a handful of individual wind turbines, but since the construction of the state's first large wind farm in 2003, four large wind farms have been constructed with at least another three under way or scheduled for construction. In the past 18 months, the amount of wind power in South Dakota has increased by 700 percent, producing approximately 285 megawatts of wind production capacity.

TransCanada, a Canadian oil company, is at present constructing its Keystone pipeline through the eastern portion of the state on its way to refineries in Oklahoma and Illinois.

Another TransCanada line, the Keystone XL, is proposed to be buried in central and western South Dakota.

The proposed Hyperion project may eventually see a huge oil refinery constructed in the extreme southeast corner of South Dakota, near Elk Point.

Energy proponents proudly note the quick development the state has seen, landowners are collecting payments from use of their property, and public entities such as school districts will some of the collected tax revenue.

But some people have concerns about the state's rapid progress of energy development.

"Industry wants things to happen fast (and) a lot of times, environmental concerns and safeguards are an afterthought," said Carr, press secretary for agriculture and public lands for an organization called the Environmental Working Group. Carr also is a former communications director for the South Dakota Democratic National Committee. "We are constantly fighting the idea that environmental safeguards come second."

The debate about South Dakota's energy boom has caused something of a split. Both sides of the issue, and the political spectrum, wonder about the speed with which the state should embrace new energy industries.

Paul Blackburn, staff attorney for Plains Justice in Vermillion, a public interest law center that focuses on environmental issues, said he believes South Dakota's renewable energy advancements still lag behind neighboring states like Iowa and Minnesota.

"Relative to other states in the region, South Dakota has very little installed wind capacity," Blackburn said. "South Dakota is lagging way behind some other states in terms of its development."

Part of that relates to the national economy, he said, but the oft-discussed lack of transmission capacity also plays a role.

"I think that South Dakota should look into allowing more South Dakotans to sell their product via the wires that currently exist to customers in other states rather than having those wires be continually maintained for an exclusive use of fossil fuel interests," he said.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., also would like to see South Dakota progress faster.

"I would argue that we haven't moved fast enough," said Thune, who has long been a key figure behind energy development in the state.