Rapid City legislator signals railroads could move more hazardous materials through South Dakota

A rail switch on the former Milwaukee Road at Stamford in occupied South Dakota

Watco Companies owns some 43 shortline railroads in North America and Australia but in Chicago the firm has been accused of environmental racism after the US Environmental Protection Agency found high levels of manganese, lead and arsenic in the soil on the city's Southeast Side. Chicago is a notorious railroad bottleneck where spills of toxic materials are myriad. Despite those revelations the State of South Dakota intends to sell the former Milwaukee Road right of way from Mitchell to Rapid City to Watco instead of deeding it back to the tribal nations signatory to the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. 

The move comes after catastrophic plunges in commodities prices, numerous wrecks and water breaches on track owned by Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad (RCPE), a subsidiary of Genesee and Wyoming operating just north of the former Milwaukee line on a nearly parallel trackbed. The Trump Organization's Department of Transportation headed by the wife of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has just awarded more than $5.6 million in grants to upgrade infrastructure and enhance rail safety in the red moocher state that is South Dakota including $2.24 million for the RCPE mainline.

Since the 1980s, the Surface Transportation Board's regulation of the rail sector has been focused on ensuring competition, fair rates, efficiency, and suitable financial performance. The proposal would compel the STB to reconsider its use of a financial measurement called revenue adequacy. The new construct would consider revenue adequacy metrics as the upper limit on a railroad's financial performance and would do so on a year-by-year retroactive accounting basis. The proposal before the STB would make it much harder for railroads to receive the private [investment] they need to succeed for shippers by artificially disincentivizing strong financial performance capital. Investors consider a host of options and make choices driven by an expectation of strong performance and financial returns. [State Senator Jessica Castleberry (R-35)]

South Dakota's rail board is made up of two Democrats and five members of the Republican American Nazi Party. A majority has voted to put all of the state-owned track up for sale and the Mitchell Rapid City Regional Railroad Authority is expected to survive if the Watco deal goes through. Based in Pittsburg, Kansas Watco's biggest customer is Koch Industries, a major campaign contributor to Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.

State officials said that the authority should remain, if only to help serve as an economic development arm for any upgrades Watco wants to do that might require funding through the state. In order for the Watco sale to be finalized, the MRC Authority would have to hold a special meeting to sign off, but the primary power rests with the State Rail Board and Gov. Kristi Noem, who also would be required to approve of the sale. [Mitchell Daily Republic]

TransCanada, now TC Energy, spilled some 5000 barrels of toxic diluted bitumen on northeastern South Dakota in 2017. South Dakota has no contingency money for cleaning up such disasters and because it is an international project ecoterrorist TC Energy doesn’t pay into a reclamation fund.

Early Wednesday morning, September 16, a few Martin city residents got to see to a phenomenal sight as Perkins Specialized Transportation Contracting hauled this unidentified object along Highway 18 heading west. PST is a long-distance superload transport service based out of Northfield, MN. The company is approved as a Tier 1 National MCEP (Motor Carrier Evaluation Program) carrier for the U.S. Department of Energy to haul nuclear waste and low-level radioactive components from decommissioning sites throughout the USA. [Bennett County Booster]

Rail cars carrying diluted bitumen could be loaded in Philip then be transported through Pierre, Huron and maybe Brookings then south through Sioux Falls to the depot at Cushing, Oklahoma. But, running a bomb train through white towns won't fly when you can build a leaky pipeline through stolen treaty ground so it's hard to imagine these projects going through cemeteries where people of European descent are buried.