Deep borehole could be resurrected after Summit defeat

In 2016 the Department of Energy and Republican former President Heather Wilson of the South Dakota School of Mines later Air Force Secretary in the first Trump term a Rapid City firm specializing in toxic waste floated the idea of a deep borehole in Spink or Haakon Counties where contaminated materials could be dumped. Albuquerque-based Valero Energy, a chemical company that is was one of Heather Wilson's favorite benefactors and has an ethanol processing scheme in Aurora, South Dakota has given Republican now US Senator Mike Rounds at least $10,000 in campaign contributions. 

Then because the state relies on taxpayer help to finance improvements to infrastructure, South Dakota received nearly $27 million from the Federal Railroad Administration in both 2022 and 2023 through what’s known as federal Short-Time Compensation program. Aurora sits on the tracks of the Rapid City Pierre and Eastern Railroad which also go through Haakon County.

After public outcry scuttled its eminent domain scam federally subsidized Sioux Falls, South Dakota chemical company POET, that enables nitrate pollution to grow corn for ethanol, entered an agreement to transport waste carbon dioxide through Nebraska in an existing natural gas pipeline to a sequestration site in Wyoming. After being denied permits Summit Carbon Solutions is petitioning courts to end litigation where they are the plaintiffs.

Some Great Plains states, such as Minnesota and Wyoming, report on the total tonnage of hazardous materials carried by rail in their states, but South Dakota does not. In an email response to questions, Jack Dokken, the air, rail and transit program manager for the South Dakota Department of Transportation, said the federal government is responsible for regulating rail shipments in South Dakota, but the state can respond to a release of hazardous materials. [11 billion-pound mystery: The chemicals South Dakota trains carry]

Republican then-US Representative Kristi Noem balked at the idea of storing nuclear materials underground but as governor she signed SB 201 which some call the "Landowner Bill of Rights" further splitting the South Dakota Republican Party and caving to the Green New Deal.

South Dakota is a sacrifice zone so if Earth haters like Pat Powers believe CO2 can be transported safely trains carrying it through Brookings to a site West River then buried under the Pierre Shale should be perfectly fine, right?

Area man training drone pilots in Ukraine

Luke Fitch is the oldest son of Steve and Lynn. This morning the BBC reported on Ukrainian drone superiority in its war of resistance. Luke is owner-operator of Santa Fe-based Altitude FX.

The American president and his VP trying to shout down Zelensky will go down as one of the most disgraceful moments in American history.

South Dakota still among most federally dependent states

In 2024 South Dakota dropped to 49th in financial literacy and 50th in financial knowledge and education despite the Republican former governor's pathological Pollyannaism. The state was the 43rd best economy in the US, 51st in percentage of businesses owned by women and 50th in innovation potential. Because of talent flight and brain drain in 2023 South Dakota was among the least innovative states, ranked 50th in venture capital spending per capita, 47th in R&D spending and 51st in share of tech companies. 

Creighton University's Ernie Goss and supply managers are sounding the alarm again about the Trump tariffs, economic uncertainty and the potential for retaliation. Only nine percent of bankers see a potential of growth in the coming six months and economic optimism plummeted to 45.7 in February from 61.4 in January over concerns about global economic tensions and rising tariffs. Farmland prices sank again, farm equipment sales fell for the eighteenth straight month and retail sales are at the lowest levels since the pandemic.

WalletHub's newest surveys reveal South Dakota is now 40th in innovation but 50th in its share of technology companies, 48th in R&D spending per capita, has dropped to the third best state for doctors but 11th most federally dependent, 4th in rank for government dependence and is now 16th in medical environment rank.

South Dakota ranks as the third-best state for doctors, in part because physicians have one of the highest starting salaries in the country, at $5,330 per month. The state ranks particularly high when it comes to the yearly salaries for psychiatrists ($273,000) and general internal medicine physicians ($318,000). In addition, doctors in The Mount Rushmore State pay less for malpractice insurance premiums than people in most other states. South Dakota also ranks well in the number of physician assistants per 1,000 residents, and has around 8.5 hospitals for every 100,000 residents, which is one of the highest numbers in the country. [Best and Worst States for Doctors (2025)

Cimpl Meats in Yankton has released some 250 workers after American Foods Group said the location isn't profitable and is moving its operations to Missouri. 

Threatened species, Forest Service, Wyoming, warring ranchers, sheriff, politics colliding in northern Black Hills

Forty five years ago this interested party logged in the Buckhorn and Moskee, Wyoming areas of the Black Hills when it was home to some of the last old-growth ponderosa pine stands in the region. We operated a belt-driven portable sawmill powered by a John Deere tractor on private ground where I cut and skidded some huge bug-killed trees. 

In 2020 the State of Wyoming completed the purchase of some 4349 acres of private land surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest near the border with South Dakota in the Grand Canyon area near Moskee in Crook County about seven miles east of Sundance. 

It's home for 63 species of birds, 30 mammals, 8 reptiles, 4 amphibians, 38 plants identified as critters of greatest conservation need and include the northern goshawk, northern pygmy-owl, least weasel, smooth green snake, the threatened northern long-eared bat and black-backed woodpecker. Wyoming is a fence-out state so the parcel is at risk to cattle encroaching from neighboring allotments and private property but Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge has refused to ticket the livestock owners who complain the cost of fencing is prohibitive. 

Grazing on federal lands is a privilege not a right and the Forest Service issues tickets for noncompliance but can also allow permits for trespass.

No legal fix has yet been found for the state land lease issue in the Moskee area that left two ranchers at loggerheads over grazing rights [sic]. However, Bearlodge District Ranger Patrick Champa visited the Crook County Commissioners last week to explain how the U.S. Forest Service has been working with the Office of State Lands and Investments to tackle the problem once cattle are turned out for the year. USFS does not require fencing on its leases. [Mediation ongoing for Moskee grazing issue]

Now, extended drought in the region is causing a bump in the number of pine beetles like Dendroctonus ponderosae and Ips pini so Neiman Enterprises has compelled the BHNF to request comment on proposals for commercial logging on 8,000 acres of National Forest System land four miles south of Beulah, WY and on 6,372 acres and fuel treatments on a total of 15,170 acres of NFS land on the South Dakota side of the border. 

Spearditch Republican Randy Deibert, a monetary recipient of Neiman largesse, is all for the projects even as the Norbeck Society and the group, People for Sustainable Logging in the Black Hills are sounding the alarm on over-logging on an already-stressed BHNF. 

Dave Mertz is a retired natural resource officer for the BHNF who attended a 2024 roundtable discussion in Spearditch hosted by South Dakota's lone US Representative Dusty Johnson who sicced two fellow Republican congress members on Regional Forester Frank Beum and BHNF Supervisor Shawn Cochran. Cochrane was the sixth different leader in 2023 alone and 11th in the past seven years. Mertz just told an interested party that the Allowable Sale Quantity or ASQ on the BHNF should be about 40,000 hundred cubic feet (CCF) and that despite increased timber sales the closure of Neiman's mill in Spearditch is only a matter of time.

HMC responsible for 'death map' in New Mexico

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. 

It was made a Superfund site by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1983, plaintiffs filed a lawsuit, the mill closed in 1990 and in 2001 HMC merged with Barrick Gold. 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.

The leftover slurry was piped into two unlined earthen pits, the largest the size of 50 football fields and filled with over 21 million tons of uranium mill tailings. Over time, the uranium tailings decayed into radon gas; meanwhile, radioactive contaminants seeped into four of the region’s aquifers. Residents compiled a list of neighbors who died of cancer — they called it the Death Map. In fact, the conditions necessary for contaminants to infiltrate a fifth aquifer in a single generation — not a thousand years — could already be in the making. The future of the site seems all but predetermined: a wasteland in the truest sense, and a national sacrifice zone. Adding to the uncertainty is a recent announcement that the Trump administration intends to cut personnel at the EPA by up to 65 percent. “We’ve been poisoned to the gills,” says Christine Lowery, the Cibola county commissioner. [Poisoning the well]

Nearly a century of residue from Homestake and the Black Hills Mining District affects millions of cubic yards of riparian habitat all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Although the Oahe Dam was completed in 1962 sequestering most of the silt the soils of the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers are inculcated with arsenic at levels that have killed cattle. Endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, catfish and most other organisms cope with lethal levels of mercury throughout the South Dakota portion of the Missouri River. 

Tailings from uranium mining have been detected in Angostura Reservoir in the southern Black Hills and in northwestern South Dakota cleanup in the Cave Hills area went for decades without remediation.

Wife of Brookings Earth hater makes plea for Medicaid protection

So, the more Republican South Dakota gets the stingier and more cruel the residents become. Not only has the SDGOP failed Indigenous Americans by not expanding Medicaid it has failed veterans and the elderly: its historically loyal voter base. But hey, if Tony Venhuizen wants to feed from the Qochtopus gravy train he has to prove he’s numbed to the misery, hopelessness and despair his father-in-law and political party have heaped on South Dakotans. 

South Dakota is 51st in elder care protection. 

Michelle Powers is married to a Republican Brookings blogger who smears Democrats and principled conservatives who don't bend the knee to the South Dakota Republican Party establishment. They have a bunch of sick kids suffering from hellish diseases but she lives in Spearditch which is just about as far away from her husband as she can get and still live in that miserable state. 

My own personal connection to Medicaid comes from my 20-year-old daughter who has a developmental disability. My other connection to Medicaid comes from my role as chief executive officer for Northern Hills Training Center (NTHC), a community-based support provider, where our mission is to “support people to have meaningful lives”. For NHTC, almost 90 percent of the funds we receive are generated through the Medicaid program. Significant cuts to federal Medicaid funding will place additional financial strain on the state budget, forcing us to absorb the increased costs. State budgets must prioritize mandatory Medicaid services, leaving optional services like NHTC as a community-based service vulnerable to reductions. [Why should you care about Medicaid funding?]

That SDGOP condones, encourages and even pays Pat Powers to threaten, malign, bully and libel women while their party standard-bearers preach the protection of women is a measure of hypocrisy that strains human gauges. He has long been banned from this forum and other South Dakota related sites because of a constant stream of bigotry, misogyny and other hate speech. Pernicious Pug Powers, who makes a stopped clock look like a well-greased machine, salts his blog comment section with a seemingly infinite variety of aliases that threaten or jeer his political enemies.

Another day of red flag warnings for failed red state

Yes, the grassland fire danger index will reach the very high and extreme categories Sunday and Monday for most of the failed red state of South Dakota.

The 2025 calendar year runoff forecast above Sioux City is 22.1 MAF, 86% of average. The runoff forecast is based on current soil moisture conditions, plains snowpack, mountain snowpack, and long-term precipitation and temperature outlooks. Mountain snow normally peaks near April 17. [Defense Visual Information Distribution Service]

South Dakota falls down on passenger rail

From my inbox.

The South Dakota Senate Stumbles

The enthusiasm from South Dakotans has been overwhelming this past year after the FRA Long-distance Service Study recommended Amtrak serve the Mount Rushmore state for the first time in its nearly 54 year history!

Regrettably, earlier this week the South Dakota Senate voted down House Concurrent Resolution 6008 on the Senate floor Monday 18-17. This comes after it passed the House Transportation Committee 13-0, House Floor vote, and Senate Transportation Committee 6-0 (with one absence).

The following statement was made during the Senate floor debate: “I did some research on Amtrak. Sometimes, you can get 90% funding for that, which is great, I think we heard that. However, they’ve done this in other states and they’ve measured that it costs almost $100,000,000 per mile of line. That’s a big number, even if you take the 90% for federal coverage, that’s $10 million per mile to put a passenger rail service in.”

Questions remain where these cost examples were found or what led them to worry about “eminent domain” being needed to bring Amtrak to the State. 

South Dakota Amtrak Facts, FRA Long-Distance Study

First, the FRA Amtrak Daily Long-Distance Service Study was very clear that it was only evaluating existing legally-secured railroad rights-of-way for service; there would be no “Greenfield” alignments. Cost estimations for new track were limited to “New track connections to connect the end-to-end route.” In the case of the route across South Dakota, no new track connections or eminent domain would be needed for the proposed route via Pierre.

Second, it is perplexing to try and understand where the Senator found these numbers for “$100,000,000 per mile of line.”

The Denver to Minneapolis/St. Paul route referenced in HCR 6008 has an estimated total of $6,276 to $8,160 Million for the “passenger specific costs” of the entire route (with one year operations added). Over the 1,136 miles of the entire route, that works out to only about $5.5 million/mile - $7.2 million/mile. Even when considering freight “capacity related projects” that may additionally be needed, this is still considerably less than the $100 million/mile referenced during the floor debate. Additionally, there is reason to believe some of these costs are inflated from realistic estimates. The study does not include the benefits of economies of scale from overlapping segments and infrastructure such as stations that would be used for multiple services. These costs would further be reduced by using the “categorical exemption” clause the FRA can approve to remove burdensome red tape of the environmental review process. 

Nationally, costs for similar passenger rail projects can be compared. Examples include:

• The 90mph Northern Lights Express (Twin Cities to Duluth) project being developed in Minnesota has been estimated to cost up to $600 million for the 152 mile length or $3.95 Million/mile. 

• The highly-successful higher-speed $6 Billion Brightline Florida project over its 235 mile length averages out to $25 million/mile. Operating at speeds up to 125mph, this has turbocharged real estate investment around their stations, the primary motivation for their service. Brightline’s projects are considerably higher due to the higher-speeds involved, urban congestion, and using a greenfield alignment along a state highway; issues that will not impact the routes across South Dakota. Former Florida Governor and current US Senator Rick Scott was even an investor in Brightline. 

• The 2020 Washington State East-West Rail Study found that reimplementing service would only cost $6.1 Million/mile in 2025 dollars, even though the study undercounted potential ridership and benefits, and overestimated infrastructure costs.

100+mph across the South Dakota prairie? Yes please!

South Dakota Transportation Spending 

South Dakota has been spending considerable sums for other transportation projects around the state; many times exceeding the costs for passenger rail transportation. 

The state is funnelling over $1 billion dollars into roadway expansion around the Sioux Falls metropolitan area with the $210 Million, 8.7 mile, South Veterans Parkway ($24 million/mile), $49 Million 85th Street interchange project, and a further $800 million announced last September. 

West River the state is spending $72 Million rebuilding an existing 15 miles of US Highway 385 in the Black Hills ($4.8 million/mile). 

The widening of E. 10th Street in Sioux Falls and creation of the Veterans Parkway necessitated procurement of privately-held land. If the SDDOT has been able to safely and satisfactorily navigate these examples, I have every faith in their ability to assist development of passenger rail services on existing lines within our state. We owe it to our economy and further generations to ensure this investment is made for our continued prosperity. 

The continuing consolidation of the aviation industry has endangered service to many smaller airports including those in South Dakota. If it were not for Essential Air Service subsidies, Aberdeen, Watertown, and Pierre would not have public air service (about $15 million/year).

While highways and airports are important, for our interconnected transportation network, rail should also receive the same amount of support from our legislators. 

In conclusion

In conclusion, I cannot blame any of our SD Senators (or House members) for voting down this resolution. After over 50 years of deliberate exclusion by power-players in Washington D.C., it will take some time to advocate and educate our State representatives on what these services will mean for our citizens and how much they truly cost. Public citizens need to keep advocating and educating their elected officials on these matters. 

East Coast Elites trying to throw us off the map are not going to make their over-built projects any cheaper. We deserve good quality service, too. 

Expanding Amtrak to South Dakota is feasible, cost-effective, and achievable. With hard hitting leaders on the national level like Senator Thune, Senator Rounds and Representative Johnson, we can make that happen! If it were not for US Senator Francis Case, we would not have I-29 between Sioux Falls and Fargo. 

If you attend a Legislative Cracker Barrel this weekend, please consider asking your state Senator how they voted on the resolution and explain their reasoning in light of the facts laid out here.

Together, East River and West River, we can accomplish so much, including this long-need expansion of Passenger Rail service to our state. We owe it to our successors to do all in our power to make it happen!

Dan Bilka, March, 2025

Bankers, farmers finding out as Trump fucks around

One hundred percent of the failed state of South Dakota is under some level of drought.

A cynical observer might suspect bankers provided gloomy outlooks to the Rural Mainstreet Index during the Biden years especially in midwestern swing states to sink Democratic Party prospects. But today, Creighton University's Ernie Goss and supply managers are sounding the alarm again about the Trump tariffs, economic uncertainty and the potential for retaliation. 

The RMI fell for the 17th time in 18 months and a survey of bankers in ten Midwestern states revealed a dismal outlook after the February score fell to 38 on a zero to 100 scale where 50 is growth neutral. Only nine percent of bankers see a potential of growth in the coming six months and economic optimism plummeted to 45.7 in February from 61.4 in January over concerns about global economic tensions and rising tariffs. Farmland prices sank again, farm equipment sales fell for the eighteenth straight month and retail sales are at the lowest levels since the pandemic. 

Until now Republicans weren't anxious to write a new farm bill because the agriculture recession made the Biden/Harris administration look bad. And, Republicans in congress stalled immigration reform because it makes sense to Earth haters that after he was elected again the Orange Julius Fat Nixon would run America into the dirt so banks can foreclose on the whole dealio to massage auction price points. 

Beekeepers, including some in South Dakota, are facing devastating losses due mostly to insecticides while Bayer might even pull Roundup® over cancer concerns and mounting losses to lawsuits. 

Learn more at NPR.

Timeline cleanse on march to doomsday

All sixteen horses were in the same place at the same time and with the arrival of two new breeding age stallions no doubt the mares are pregnant again.

In a landmark victory for wild horse protection, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado has overturned the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) controversial Adoption Incentive Program (AIP), ruling that it violated multiple federal laws by failing to undergo required National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and Administrative Procedures Act (APA) requirements. The court found it was “not hard to imagine” that slaughter of wild horses could be “fairly traceable” to BLM’s actions regarding the national AIP program, and noted the legally required need for vigorous public comment and agency review, which the BLM failed to conduct. [Federal Court Overturns BLM's Controversial Cash Incentive Adoption Program]

But with the end of civilization at hand having more ponies is probably a good thing, right?

Odenbach: make America great again but not upstream of my house

It's no secret South Dakota is a chemical toilet since Republican is simply another word for Earth hater. Recall that the South Dakota Republican Party ceded authority to the US Environmental Protection Agency and Nuclear Regulatory Commission for uranium mining in the Black Hills after the legislature realized there is no competent oversight from state agencies. 

But several months ago House Majority Leader Scott Odenbach (R-Spearditch) shared several graphics at his Faceberg page from the state's 2022 report of impaired waterways in South Dakota with concerns that Spearditch Creek might look like the Big Sioux River one day. A Canada-based company with an office in Lead (where they don't pay any corporate income taxes) wants to mine on 46,000 acres in the Spearditch Creek watershed leased from Barrick, another Canadian exploiter. The Black Hills region is a de facto part of the American Redoubt so Rep. Odenbach is tapped into the survivalist real estate boom, too. 

He penned an op-ed published in an East River paper.

Dare we ask, do we want or need more open-pit mining in this area? Will another hundred septic tanks upstream from your house make your quality of life better? HCR 6010 is just saying the quiet part out loud. [VIEWPOINT | Protecting the Black Hills]

Odenbach's resolution has Democratic support but how can a legislator who believes America is only great when Republican presidents are in power revere an executive who is slashing the EPA, promising to clearcut the Black Hills National Forest, pledging to mine public lands sacred to Indigenous peoples, erasing the workforce and putting septic systems in sensitive habitats all in the name of making America great again?

Stripping public lands, ending sanctions on Russian timber and slapping tariffs on Canadian lumber? What a shocker.