Fascinated by this story, linked on Drudge, in which Sioux City, S.D., voted 58-42 to permit a rezoning that would allow the first oil refinery to be built in the continental United States in 32 years.

At stake was billions of dollars in capital investment and thousands of high-paying jobs. From the beginning, Hyperion executives said they would abandon its Union County site, just north of Elk Point, if a majority of voters failed to give their blessing to the rezoning.

While conceding defeat, opponents vowed to keep fighting the controversial project on every imaginable front, pressing on with a lawsuit it filed against the county over the zoning procedures and opposing Hyperion as it applies for a bevy of state and federal permits.

“We have strategies in place to slow or delay all the permit processes,” Ed Cable, chairman of the anti-Hyperion group Save Union County, said after the vote.

Bet you know exactly what their arguments are, too.

In any event, I stand corrected - and Robert Field of NewsLanc knows this, because he was at the gig where I said that I doubted any community in America would permit the construction of a new oil refinery within its borders. Lancaster County sure wouldn’t; you can imagine the outcry over that, even from conservatives who wail that what this country really needs to do is build more refineries, build nuclear plants… somewhere else.

Apparently then, “somewhere else” is South Dakota - where the billions in investment and thousands of high-paying jobs are otherwise hard to come by. Places like Kansas and Nebraska, where entire towns have been emptying out, might wind up being viable as well, though transportation is always going to be an issue there. If you’re community’s dying economically, here’s a way to resuscitate it; while permitting us snobs in communities that aren’t dying to palm off the responsibility to others.