BHE intends to rape Colorado electricity subscribers

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. Also in 2018 a majority of Pueblo, Colorado residents pushed the city to end its agreement with BHE and create a municipal electric utility. 

But in 2020 despite acknowledging BHE is a predator residents voted to remain enslaved to the South Dakota-based monopoly yet Pueblo still endures crappy service. Nevertheless, the utility laid off 44 employees across their eight-state service region, 24 of those positions in Rapid City. 

On October 26, 2026, the Pueblo City Council unanimously passed a resolution opposing two Black Hills Energy proposals that could increase residential electric bills by more than 22% through 2030. The city passed the resolution just one day before an October 27 deadline to submit testimonial answers to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission. 

A proposed 14.7% increase raising average monthly bills from $124.18 to $142.48. A temporary two-year credit attempts to mask this as an 8.8% increase, but it relies on previously collected ratepayer funds and expires later. An additional 7.9% average monthly bill increase from 2026 to 2030, driven by resource plans and a rising Renewable Energy Standard Adjustment surcharge. Together, these proposals push total residential increases past 22% and will also raise operational costs for municipal facilities. BHE defends the increases as necessary for grid resilience and weather outage mitigation. 

BHE and NorthWestern Energy are currently in the final throes of a $15.4 billion all-stock merger to form a combined holding company called Bright Horizon Energy Corporation.

Learn more here.

Burns planned on public lands in South Dakota

 

SD uranium shill caught in water trap

In 1951 after uranium was discovered in South Dakota's southern Black Hills more than 150 mines were ripped into the Earth where the Oglala Lakota once made their winter camp. Since then, radioactive tailings from those scars have been detected in Angostura Reservoir after a dam on the Cheyenne River broke in 1962. Beginning in 1958 Homestake Mining Company gouged uranium from New Mexico leaving piles of waste rock laden with selenium causing cancers and thyroid disease in its wake.

In 2019 because the Trump Organization despises Native Americans uranium mining was fast-tracked in and around Indian Country where tribes already suffer from diseases and birth defects wrought by radioactive contamination and in northwestern South Dakota cleanup in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation.

Clean Nuclear Energy Corp., a subsidiary of Nexus Uranium Corp., applied for a state exploration permit to drill exploratory holes up to 700 feet deep in search of uranium on state land and since Mark Hollenbeck had previously shilled for enCore Energy's nearby Dewey-Burdock uranium site Nexus appointed him to its advisory board in April 2026 to leverage his regional expertise ahead of regulatory hearings.

Following application submitted directly by Nexus Uranium Corp itself and not a subsidiary and after the May 2026 hearings the Chord Project permit stalled prompting Nexus to pivot its immediate exploration focus toward its projects in Wyoming and Arizona.

Canada-based Clean Nuclear Energy Corporation wants to drill through the water-bearing Inyan Kara Group on School and Public Lands property in Fall River County. The project is less than a mile from Craven Canyon where pictographs and rock art of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, Ponca, eastern Dakota, and other Native American cultures are protected on the Black Hills National Forest.

Read the Faceberg comment here.

Pheasants disperse invasive eastern red cedar

In South Dakota the Chinese ring-necked pheasant is not wildlife but it is a canary in a chemically and genetically engineered coal mine. 

As the climate warms the northward march of eastern red cedar adds habitat for songbirds but is explosively flammable especially during red flag events. Pheasants rely heavily on eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana) berries (fleshy female cones) as a critical winter survival food source. While the invasive fowl primarily feed on agricultural grains like corn and milo during the fall, the persistent berries of the eastern red cedar provide vital nutrition when snow covers ground-level foods. 

Beyond food, eastern red cedar stands provide excellent thermal protection against harsh winter weather and serve as dense escape cover from predators. As pheasants and other wildlife forage on these berries, they act as primary seed dispersers for the tree across the landscape. Highly invasive; unchecked cedars quickly take over open spaces and crowd out vital native plant diversity but also serve as aquifer recharges especially in playas like those that sustain the Ogallala.

The good news? Some 1.3 million invasive pheasants were put to death by hunters in the state in 2025 in addition to the intentional culling of about 30,000 farm-raised fowl at Gisi Pheasant Farm because of the H5N1 bird flu outbreak.

BHNF hoping to protect streams with Wild and Scenic designation

The 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects waterways that are primitive, unpolluted, and accessible only by trail or are largely primitive with natural shorelines but accessible in parts by roads. 

In 2022 when Joe Biden was president, the Black Hills National Forest proposed Wild and Scenic designations for Little Elk Creek, Little Spearditch Creek, Spearditch Creek, Sand Creek, and Beaver Creek even though the assessment found 21 streams or stream segments totaling 144.7 miles in the South Dakota and Wyoming Black Hills were eligible for inclusion in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. Designation takes an act of Congress or a direct order from the Interior Secretary.

Some of Box Elder Creek and the Bogus Jim Creek tributary are strongholds for the lake chub and the only location within South Dakota and the Black Hills where it has been identified in the past 50 years. Finescale dace was the only fish found in Black Hills streams by the Custer Expedition in 1874 but the white sucker and threatened lake chub are also native. Dace and chub are preyed upon very heavily by non-native brown and rainbow trout. 

Earth haters in Meade County want no part of it.

The Little Elk Creek section under consideration is in both Meade and Lawrence County, and is located between Dalton Lake and the forest boundary near Piedmont. A parking lot at Little Elk Creek Trail is already frequently full, and commissioners expressed concern about what additional tourism would mean for the area, and for surrounding private property owners. The Meade County Commission’s opposition will be noted in the environmental impact statement, that is part of the Forest Service decision-making process for land designations. [Meade Co. opposes Little Elk Creek wild and scenic river designation]

Learn more from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.