Corps warning of low Missouri River levels as pipeline boondoggle doubles in price

Recall the fight over surplus water in the Missouri River basin when Marty Jackley blamed the US Army Corps of Engineers after the Oahe Dam dropped sediment that ultimately filled up some areas in South Dakota’s Moreau River. 

Hardly coincidentally, an Earth hating former governor of South Dakota who built a house in a swamp knowing Lake Sharpe was filling with silt sued the Corps after he was flooded out. 

Today, the Lewis and Clark Rural Water System exists because farmers have ruined their own wells and the Big Sioux River but South Dakota will flout Waters of the United States rulings until the cows come home unless or until downstream states cry foul.  

And speaking of poisoning your own aquifers Earth hating Republicans are begging for more federal money for a 165-mile, 71-inch pipeline from the Missouri River to Rapid City that will cost at least $4 billion then lift water nearly two thousand feet in elevation for lawns, Rally campgrounds and Ellsworth Air Force Base carving through Native America for white privilege instead of empowering communities to harvest snowmelt and rainwater while rural communities are dependent on politicians who exploit need.

The United States Army Corps of Engineers says April 2026 runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, IA, was 51% of average– or 1.5 million acre-feet. John Remus, chief of the Corps’ Missouri River Basin Water Management Division, says dry conditions are present in 74% of the basin. He says drought conditions are expected to persist through July with some expansion likely in Montana and South Dakota. As a result, the runoff forecast was lowered by 0.7 MAF from last month. [Missouri River upper basin runoff forecast lowered due to dry conditions]

South Dakota receives zero dollars for hydropower generation but eminent domain forces transmission lines to be built so how is that in the state’s best interest? Silt deposits are the responsibility of the state so AG Jackley should sue the mining and ag industries for that runoff instead of blaming the Corps.

“'Ultimately a lawsuit was filed in 2003 [and] the federal court judge held for liability against the United States and held that they were the proximate cause of injury. That was back in 2022. As I sit here today, the United States still has not resolved that case. It has created major problems with the environment and other concerns. The United States held that trust lands that involved ranchers and native americans [sic] have no property interests. And equally so on range units – where you combine parcels of land – set up by the BIA. They ultimately determined that that also is not a property interest. So they put these ranchers in jeopardy of their farming operations by bad decision they’ve used the civil courts to drag out litigation,' said AG Jackley." [Jackley, Sullivan, Byfield speak in House lawfare roundtable]

With irony as a casuality US Senator Mike Rounds continues to push for legislative changes to the Corps' Master Manual to prioritize flood control over the threatened piping plover and endangered pallid sturgeon and demands better mitigation strategies for the Missouri River basin.

Tapio qualifies for November ballot, will siphon votes from Earth haters

God certainly works in mysterious ways, innit? 

Neal Tapio turned in enough signatures to run as an unaffiliated candidate for the South Dakota House of Representatives in District 5. In 2018, Tapio ran for the state’s lone seat in the US House of Representatives and finished third in the primary with approximately 24% of the vote losing to Earth hater Dusty Johnson. 

Today, it's very brave of former State Senator Tapio to expose the South Dakota Republican Party as the white extremist cult it is and he knows he can't win in a primary for statewide office that's fixed against him. In his appeals to conservatives Tapio has said that too few adolescents are being imprisoned and that he believes the people living in Oyate communities are victims of "incest and molestation" that lead to federal dependence, despair and high suicide rates.

Earth haters Byron Callies and Matt Roby are running for D-5 House but incumbent Josephine Garcia is running instead in the primary against fellow Earth hater, Glen Vilhauer for the State Senate in the 2026 cycle.

Swanson wants to go to Pierre

Editor's note: in South Dakota House District 30 the two Earth haters who advance from the primary will face Democrat Bret Swanson from the Hermosa area in the general election. He was interviewed by a newspaper that covers a Black Hills county named for a war criminal.

Swanson is a college instructor who served on the board of the Humane Society of the Black Hills for three years and the Rapid City Area Schools Board of Education for five years.

Swanson said he is running for a seat in the state house because he wants the constituents of District 30 to know there is viable choice between those who are servile to the ruling party and someone who wants to help them. He said he would bring open-mindedness, honesty and creativity to the position.

As for the biggest issues facing District 30 over the next few years, Swanson said the western part of the state is facing an historic drought, which is directly related to protection of our watershed. 

“The state needs to raise the minimum wage, offer childcare assistance and protect people with exorbitant medical bills from bankruptcy,” he said. “There needs to be a comprehensive approach to addressing educational deficiencies; mandatory early childhood education should be part of that.”

Swanson said for context, the largest publicly funded project in the state’s history is a penitentiary—$350 million for a “big, fat, ugly jail. Not a school, not a museum, not a power plant, not even a sports arena,” he said. “A monument to a failed system. This is a symbol of how shortsighted and backwards the state is and has been. Basically, most people want practical solutions to the problems they face not empty talk about who is or is not allowed to play sports.”

Swanson said relying on sales tax for property tax relief is regressive and wrong, and in the end it doesn’t solve the problem.

“The state agricultural production tax is fair,” he said. “That should be expanded.”

He also said there is a serious threat to Black Hills water quality from large out-of-state mining interests and there is a need for strong legislation to protect the watershed.

Swanson said only half the state’s voters are Republican and yet 89 percent of the legislature is Republican. In District 30, Republicans have long dominated.

“Has the district benefitted from this dominance? If you like the status quo with the rich and powerful always calling the shots, taking advantage of a gamed system, you can continue to send those who support the unfair, exploitive establishment to Pierre,” he said. “Or you can choose an alternative that puts middle- and working-class people first.”    

Read the rest here.

Olson and the war among SD Earth haters

South Dakota's favorite handicapper, Shad Olson brings more truth to the war within the SDGOP.

So, a brief description. and timeline of the power struggle inside the SDGOP.

Once MAGA patriots claimed the reins of key positions in the statewide Republican organization, the RINO donor class put the word out to stop ALL corporate and lucrative personal donations to the state party and redirected those deep pocketed donors to "South Dakota Strong," "Rushmore Principles," "Sensible South Dakota," and the mushroom-sprouted and fertilizer filled establishment PACs in order to support RINO-establocrat candidates in primary races across the state.

This discontinuation of corporate support was of course immediately and handily taken up as narrative fodder against the MAGA patriot leadership of the SDGOP by conjoined idiot twins, Katie Hoffmann and Pat Powers, who both produce dozens of badly written and painfully composed screeds, railing against the "incompetence" of, and "lack of support" for, present SDGOP leadership and the importance of having their equally stupid and politically compromised quantities returned to the throne in every county and precinct in South Dakota.

"Put the RINOs back in control and the money will flow once again."

Of course it will. Because the corporatist spigots will be cranked back to full.

This manufactured drought of dried up corporate support creates the illusion of a lack of statewide party loyalty, seized upon by the tittering twits and out-of-joint establishment hacks who were displaced in the MAGA wave, 2018-2024. The same wave that resulted in Pat Powers expulsion and exile from his previous SDGOP "official blogger" perch in same timeframe. An $85,000 gig for the news judgment of a TMZ tabloid artist and the writing skills of a toddler.

Of equal import and simultaneous to his present run for South Dakota Governor, Dusty Johnson has waged nearly a one-man ground war over the past two years to groom, boost and restore precinct and county SDGOP leadership to RINO hands... all backed and capitalized with Dusty warchest dollars and the supplicant narrative retardation of the Hoffmann-Powers paste eating TBI brigade.

Don't be fooled by the phony smear. As with everything else in their echo chamber of lies and fabrication, it's coming directly out of their leaky diapers. Size XXXL.

South Dakota is flunking high school

Source: WalletHub

Daily Digest and the latest in South Dakota's red state failure: 50th in financial education performance and access, 49th in financial education growth, 49th in high school financial literacy, 48th in high schools ranked in top 10% and 48th in projected high school financial literacy grade by 2028.

Recall Earth hating former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds won election to the US Senate for advocating the dissolution of the US Department of Education so he is currently sponsoring a bill that would eradicate the DoEd, curtail federal funding for kids and South Dakota still hates teachers. Students in South Dakota are fifth in overall rank of those in debt and suffer that load at the highest proportion in the US. The Bendagate state is 37th in grant and work opportunities rank and is tied for 42nd in student work opportunities.