Canadian company will test local control, tribal stewardship

Recall that the South Dakota Republican Party ceded authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission for uranium mining after the legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies. 

Rising in the Wyoming Pumpkin Buttes the 300 mile long Cheyenne River flows through Indian Country and Powertech USA, part of Canadian firm Azarga Uranium, now enCore Energy, wants to mine near Dewey northwest of Edgemont on a tributary of the river despite warnings of high risk from a securities firm. 

So, to maintain local control Fall River County voted to make uranium mining a nuisance in 2022. 

Now, 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.

Great Sioux Nation and Biden Administration representatives opened a path to joint stewardship of the Black Hills National Forest on Aug. 22. The leaders of their respective nations signed a memorandum engaging federal land managers with tribal experts in consultation, planning, and employment on sacred ground. The document is based on a federal template for MOUs. The directive’s title defines the intent: “Collaboration with the Great Sioux Nation Tribes in Relation to Forestry Planning, Healthy Forest, Workforce Development and Stewardship in the Black Hills National Forest.” In it, the tribes stipulated that their cooperation waives no treaty rights. Across the country, the Forest Service has entered into 180 similar stewardship accords with tribes. [Sioux Nation, U.S. Forest Service forge joint stewardship framework for Black Hills]

In 2000 now-dead Republican South Dakota Governor Bill Janklow sold the state cement plant in Rapid City to Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC). Democratic legislators voted against Janklow's folly because GCC was exempted from mineral severance and was allowed to mine on ground owned by School and Public Lands. Limestone-rich state trust land near Dewey was leased for a dollar for 99 years and could be renewed twice so for three bucks GCC received the mineral rights for 297 years and school kids got screwed. During the 1980s and 90s the cement plant returned about $11 million a year but in 2013 the legislature had to kick in $4 million to the plant's retirement system and South Dakota still surfs the bottom for America's education dollars.

South Dakota's Trump-drunk governor has rejected some $70 million in federal funds for greener energy development.