Spanish firm to buy PNM; regulators will be appointed not elected

Utilities are not your friends. 

Avangrid, Inc., a US-based subsidiary of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola with a base in my home town of Elkton, South Dakota plans to spend at least $216 million on a wind farm. That amount of cash would take nearly 17,000 electric subscribers completely off the grid. 

Pending approvals Iberdrola and Avangrid will acquire Public Service of New Mexico (PNM) for about $4.3 billion. The move came just before voters changed the state's regulatory body to an elected five-member board to a three person governor-appointed commission. 

The constitutional amendment will not impact the currently serving commissioners, who will serve out the remainder of their terms and leave office in 2023. The two newly-elected commissioners, incumbent Cynthia Hall and newcomer Joseph Maestas, both Democrats, will serve two year terms ending in 2023. At that point, a nominating committee will provide the governor with a list of qualified nominees. The governor will appoint one for a two-year term, another for a four-year term and the final commissioner will be appointed for a six-year term. After those terms are completed, all of the commissioners will serve six-year terms and no commissioner can serve more than two consecutive terms. The governor cannot appoint more than two members that have the same political affiliation and the nominees must be approved by the state Senate. ['We need professionals rather than politicians.' Voters approve change to an appointed PRC]

Recall that in 2018 Black Hills Energy sold some of its 700 oil and gas wells in New Mexico and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming to help finance a $70 million monolith headquarters in Rapid City. It was built there on the backs of subscribers without choices because out of state Republicans who write the tax law own South Dakota and because the state ended environmental oversight. BHE raised much of its construction cash on Colorado cannabis. 

Microgrid technologies are destined to encourage self-reliance, enhance tribal sovereignty, free communities from electric monopolies and net-metering only gives control back to utilities enabled by moral hazard. Ice storms routinely knock out electric power on American Indian reservations often resulting in lost lives and the inevitable cyber attacks on the US will take down the grid for days, even months causing food shortages and mayhem. 

Public Service Company of New Mexico announced plans Monday to transfer its 13 percent ownership share of the Four Corners Power Plant near Farmington to the Navajo Transitional Energy Company by the end of 2024. [Santa Fe New Mexican]

The average cost of a household photovoltaic system is about $3/watt or around $12,810 before tax credits are factored in. Leaving the grid has never been easier so anyone who can afford to it should do it now and with Trump still in the White House it's never been more urgent.

Woster gets on board with kurtz cannabis plan

Despite lies from the South Dakota Republican Party video lootery, payday loan sharks, domestic violence and homelessness are inextricably linked putting children at risk to more catastrophic consequences far more often than has happened in states that have legalized or lessened penalties for casual use of cannabis. 

The Family Heritage Alliance, a conservative group with a large following in South Dakota, estimates video lootery costs the state far more in real dollars than it generates in revenue yet the governor says cannabis is bad. If their numbers are accurate video lootery costs the state at least $280 million each year.

WHEREAS, video lottery is often referred to as the crack cocaine of gambling because it is recognized as the most addictive form of gambling; and WHEREAS, South Dakota is now estimated to have between 13,000 and 26,000 pathological gamblers; and WHEREAS, South Dakota now has the undesirable distinction of being ranked second in the nation with respect to gambling addiction; and WHEREAS, research indicates that the annual cost to a state for each pathological gambler is in excess of fourteen thousand dollars; and WHEREAS, crime statistics confirm significant increases in armed robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement, and family violence, as well as suicide, since the institution of video lottery; and WHEREAS, since the institution of video lottery, the exorbitant and ever-increasing social costs associated with this form of gambling have taken their toll both directly and indirectly on individuals, on families, on our businesses and communities, and on the health and well being of our state. [The Deleterious Effects of Video Lottery]

Since at least 2011 I've taken my proposal to mirror state gaming statutes and make Deadwood the non-tribal cannabis market to mayors and several commission members but they have always blown me off because they want the sports betting gig. So my position today is that the tribes must have exclusive production and distribution privileges. If the Neanderthal South Dakota Legislature had any integrity or ethics (they don’t) they would empower Indigenous communities to be the sole producers and marketers of legal cannabis in the state (they won't). But, since the perpetual welfare state is owned by the out of state Republicans who make the laws an attorney general probably guilty of manslaughter will sue to block either or both of them from taking effect.

 

Minnesota grower learns industrial cannabis is a gamble

Industrial cannabis (hemp) seeds with decent cannabidiol (CBD) producing genetics are a buck apiece costing about $50,000 to sow 20 acres. One grower gets $5 a seed, a pretty spendy investment for any farmer but putting any cannabis industry into the hands of a few oligarchs is stupid policy. 

This crop is not the benign introduced species it’s cracked up to be and stray pollen from the hemp industry can wreak havoc on growers of therapeutic and “recreational” cannabis. Medicine and a potential revenue source are being put at risk by an experiment that makes Jerusalem artichokes and Belgian endive look like safe investments.

Alex White Plume of the Oglala Lakota Nation in occupied South Dakota planted his grow/op on May 30 and on August 1st he tested the THC level to be sure his crop conforms to tribal code. He said the original law was 1% but the "lawyers got a hold of it and rather than act sovereign they went .3%." His clones are bred to be high in CBD. In a Faceberg post White Plume told journalist, Tim Giago that growers are governed by heavy-handed policy from the federal government and the tribal councils so there is little will to deviate from the rules. White Plume has since harvested and sold his crop to a Colorado processor.

Before planting just one and a half acres Minnesota grower Phil Reed hired Luis "Lulu Magoo" Hummel as a consultant whose own crop tested above the .3% THC threshold which led to criminal charges so attorney's fees keep the industry a gamble. 

Hemp is a "challenging grow" that's not for everybody, said Reed. According to Margaret Wiatrowski, program coordinator for the Industrial Hemp Program with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, there were 580 hemp licenses issued this year. That number includes both hemp growers and processors. An MDA inspector must sample each hemp lot produced in Minnesota, and the lots are sampled within 30 days of harvest, said Wiatrowski. Wiatrowski said over 700 samples had been collected by MDA inspectors this year, and estimated between 5-10% of the samples had failed THC threshold testing. In 2019 there was a 12% failure rate of the THC tests, she said. After being charged in Fillmore County, Hummel felt that state officials had forced him to destroy his crop without due process or clear rules in the industry. 

  Read the rest here.

Photo: top bud from a plant of an OJ Kush strain.

Native Sun News Today reaches out to NM Rep. Haaland to advance land-back legislation

On this date in 1889 President Benjamin Harrison signed the proclamation creating South and North Dakota from stolen treaty lands giving Republicans four more US Senators.

The Editorial Board of Native Sun News Today and its Publisher Tim Giago sent the Bill Bradley Bill and the history of the illegal taking of the Black Hills to Deb Haaland, (D-NM) Congresswoman from New Mexico, a Native American woman, and we are encouraging her to study them and perhaps meet with some of the leaders of the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation, in order to discuss the idea of putting together another Bill in the fashion of the Bradley Bill, in an effort to get some of the stolen lands of the Black Hills returned to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people. [Making an effort to get legislation for the return of land in the Black Hills]

It’s been 40 years since attorney Mario Gonzalez filed the federal court case stopping payment of the Black Hills Claim award to the Oglala Lakota Nation. Gonzalez contends that the commission charged to make peace with tribes inserted language into the Fort Laramie Treaty signed in 1868 that Red Cloud had neither seen nor agreed to in negotiations. The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has passed resolutions condemning what they say are abuses of the General Mining Law of 1872 that led to the Custer Expedition's discovery of gold in the Black Hills. 

The South Dakota Democratic Party should advocate for paying the tribes and settling the Black Hills Claim, dissolving the Black Hills National Forest, moving management of the land from the US Department of Agriculture into the Department of Interior in cooperation with Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Forestry and Wildfire Management. Mato Paha (Bear Butte), the associated national grasslands and the Sioux Ranger District of the Custer/Gallatin National Forest should be included in the move. 

Rewild it and rename it He Sapa or Paha Sapa National Monument eventually becoming part of the Greater Missouri Basin National Wildlife Refuge connecting the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana along the Missouri River to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Canadian River through Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas. 

Bison come home to Sicanju Oyate

In 2010 then-Democratic Senator Tim Johnson tried to make a portion of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland adjacent to Badlands National Park part of the Tony Dean Wilderness Area and in 2011 Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) revived the idea. 

Led by The Nature Conservancy, a non-profit that began buying land in that part of South Dakota in 2007, sold some of it to Badlands National Park in 2012. Conata Basin in occupied South Dakota is on the top ten ecotourism sites chosen by the University of Nebraska's Great Plains Center. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Defenders of Wildlife and the Nature Conservancy teamed up with the National Park Foundation, Badlands Natural History Association, Badlands National Park Conservancy and the National Park Service Centennial Challenge fund to expand the bison range at Badlands National Park by nearly 35 square miles. 

Today, with cooperation from South Dakota State Senator Troy Heinert more bison are coming home to the Nations.

Rosebud Economic Development Corporation (REDCO), the economic arm of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, has secured nearly 28,000 acres of native grassland for the creation of a new plains bison herd with the support of the Rosebud's Tribal Land Enterprise. With a capacity to support 1,500 animals, the Wolakota Buffalo Range will become North America's largest Native American owned and managed bison herd. Over the past five years, WWF has invested more than $2.2 million in bison restoration efforts with Indigenous communities in the Northern Great Plains. This new opportunity, which aligns strongly with Lakota foundational values and beliefs, will become a model for cultural and ecological restoration efforts by Native American nations across the U.S.

Read the rest here.