## Facts

- Square Butte Electric Cooperative, formed to generate and transmit electricity for member rural electric cooperatives, planned a high-voltage direct current (DC) transmission line from a generating station near Center, North Dakota, to a converter station in Duluth, Minnesota.
- The project required condemning easements across land owned by Hilken and other Burleigh County landowners.
- Because the line carried DC, North Dakota consumers could not directly use the electricity without a converter facility in North Dakota, and no such facility was planned due to cost.
- Square Butte claimed the project would benefit North Dakota by: adding reserve and emergency power to the regional system potentially available to North Dakota; improving system reliability by stabilizing the alternating current (AC) network; and preserving contractual options for future access to power and expansion benefits.
- The district court found the selected route satisfied the statutory “greatest public benefit and least private injury” requirement, but dismissed the actions after concluding the project did not satisfy the public use requirement because in-state benefits were indirect and insubstantial.

## Issues

1. Whether condemning easements in North Dakota for an interstate DC transmission line satisfies North Dakota’s public use requirement when no immediate, direct retail supply of power to North Dakota residents is guaranteed.

## Decision

- The North Dakota Supreme Court reversed.
- The court held that the project’s cumulative benefits to North Dakota were sufficient to constitute a public use, even if individual benefits were indirect or contingent.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the determination that the taking was for a public use.

## Legal Principles

- Public use in eminent domain is not limited to projects providing immediate, direct, or purely local consumption benefits; substantial in-state public advantages may suffice even when a project is part of a regional, multi-state power system.
- Courts may consider the combined effect of multiple in-state benefits; a taking is not invalid merely because each asserted benefit, viewed separately, appears indirect or uncertain.
- Technical reliability effects on a state’s power system (including increased reserve capacity and improved stability) may qualify as cognizable public benefits supporting a finding of public use.
- A trial court’s refusal to recognize substantial in-state benefits supported by the record may be reversed as clearly erroneous.

## Conclusion

The court held that Square Butte’s proposed condemnation for a DC transmission project served a public use under North Dakota law because the aggregated reliability, reserve-capacity, and future-access benefits to North Dakota were sufficiently substantial, despite the lack of guaranteed immediate retail power delivery within the state.


Square Butte Elec. Coop. v. Hilken, 244 N.W.2d 519 (N.D. 1976)