Failed red state slow to recover from Earth's wrath

Downed power lines, unrepentant utilities, uprooted trees, wildfires, school closures, collapsed buildings, the gnashing of teeth and red state failure all fall at the feet of South Dakota Republicans. 

Mostly Republican counties are at extremely high risk of wildfire again on Friday.

Earth hater Tobin sending mixed signals

The introduction of the Chinese ring-necked pheasant to South Dakota is one of most destructive examples of ecoterrorism in US history and has heralded the near eradication of habitat for native wild turkeys and grouse. Now, the extermination of native species to prop up the pheasant industry is in full force after another Earth hating Republican governor and legislature extended bounties on raccoons and skunks known to feed on prolific invasive zebra mussels. 

Erin Tobin is an Earth hater running for the South Dakota Senate in District 21. She and her fellow Trump whores are courting donor, Brandon Maddox.

In South Dakota over a hundred native species are at risk to the Republican Party including the endangered pallid sturgeon, paddlefish, black footed ferret, northern long-eared bat, the black-backed woodpecker that feeds on bark beetles and a bird that actually walks underwater – the American dipper plus the occasional black bear, moose and wolf, just to name a few.

Republican counties are ground zero for Thursday's burn environment

Grid failures, hundred mile an hour wind gusts, school closures and wildfires will plague red counties again Thursday and Friday.

Brookings admits new water treatment plant can't remove all the forever chemicals

In 2017, a Minnesota-based company with an operation in Brookings, South Dakota hoped to drive attention from a $5 billion lawsuit over its manufactured forever chemicals that cause cancers and spontaneous abortions with a name change in its health care division. 

3M knew how bad the contamination risk was since at least the 1950s but waited until 1978 before it warned its own employees including my own sister who worked at the Brookings facility from 1974 until her death in 1995. The firm didn't notify the US Environmental Protection Agency either until 1998 when a company toxicologist noted those substances in fish, birds and other wildlife but continues manufacturing the poisonous chemicals yet today. 

3M faced numerous other PFAS lawsuits and reached a separate, much larger $10.3 billion to $12.5 billion settlement in 2023 to resolve claims by public water systems across the United States over PFAS contamination.

 

In 2024 nine of eleven sites below Watertown tested positive for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances including a hot spot in Falls Park in Sioux Falls but researchers found thirty two samples with nine types of PFAS compounds all the way to the Iowa border. That same year Brookings provided rain catchment barrels with hopes to reduce stormwater runoff.

In October, 2025 the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe filed a lawsuit against 3M in federal court, saying that the company polluted its lakes, drinking water and wildlife with the toxic chemicals.

Now, after spending some $70 million granted by federal and state governments on a water treatment plant Brookings officials have admitted the system fails at removing all the PFAS created mostly by 3M. Contaminated stormwater often overwhelms the collection pond on Solventum (3M) property then spreads the contaminants into aquifer recharges, to soils under George S. Mickelson Middle School and to the already polluted Big Sioux River. 

South Dakota State University in Brookings has begun using a liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometer to test surface water and the groundwater that traverses within the food chain according to assistant professor and coordinator of the Campus Core Mass Spectrometry Facility, M. Nurul Islam. Professor Islam could be arrested and deported if the ICE raid scheduled for Brookings targets him because the State Senators and Representatives of Brookings County and the Mayor of Brookings are all Republicans.

The Biden administration set limits on the chemicals as testing found them in nearly half of Americans’ drinking water but the Trump Organization is weakening life safety standards. So, with drought taking hold in eastern South Dakota we should be sending thoughts and prayers in advance for the wretched masses that have poisoned their own wells and tapped into big gubmint to water glyphosate-treated lawns while they complain about the protections for Waters of the United States or WOTUS.

Rapid City's Laura Armstrong would be a formidable gubernatorial candidate

Editor's note: In the years after my 1997 vision at Orman Dam, a quest for redemption overtook me. I pursued numerous concepts nearly simultaneously including a recycling initiative that would look much like Rapid City's Material Recovery Facility does today: metals, paper, plastics, glass, the whole schmear. 

Laura Armstrong is a local speech language pathologist who served on the Rapid City Common Council from 2017-2023, twice as Council President. This interested party has asked her to enter the Democratic gubernatorial primary so elderly spoiler Rick Knobe stays out of the race.

Rapid City residents are being told — once again — to brace for higher waste service fees and reduced recycling pickup. We're told it's necessary. We're told it's inevitable. We're told that someday, eventually, something might improve "depending on market demands."

But let's be honest: this isn't about markets. It's about leadership. Or more accurately, the lack of it.

At the Dec. 1 City Council meeting, City Hall voted to raise waste service fees and cut recycling pickup in half. And they did so while admitting that our landfill is nearly full, the cost of the last waste cell doubled from projections, and we only have about twenty-five years of capacity left. We are running out of room, out of time and- apparently -out of vision.

The city now acknowledges not everything we carefully rinse and place into our blue bins is actually recycled. Plastics labeled three through seven simply end up in the landfill, because markets are unstable. Glass is often crushed and discarded. Shiny cardboard goes straight to the trash heap. Even the city's own outreach staff confirms that major categories of recyclables are landfilled because we lack the local capacity to do anything else with them. If this is the best we can do, then why aren't we doing more to change it?

It appears we have a problem of short-sightedness. The Material Recovery Facility (MRF) does impressive work with the limited tools it has. It is old but functional; and thankfully, staffed with dedicated workers making the most of aging equipment. And yes, it generates revenue: Around $350,000 a year. But the bigger story, the one city leaders seem unwilling to confront, is that our current system is fundamentally reactive, not proactive.

We increase fees instead of increasing capacity. We reduce services instead of expanding partnerships.

We shrug at global markets instead of building local solutions. And all of this in a state that is growing by thousands of new residents every year-people who bring with them jobs, families, energy, and yes, their garbage. Yet our planning for solid waste has not kept pace with our growth. Leadership matters, and on this issue, leadership has been missing.

Years ago, I approached the School of Mines to explore a potential collaboration for local waste innovation, recycling science, and sustainable materials research. That conversation could have sparked a long-term partnership between our city and one of the nation's most respected engineering institutions. We have worldclass minds right here in Rapid City. People from all over the world come to our local university to learn, innovate, and take on the complex problems that shape our future.

Why weren't we leveraging that talent? Why aren't we now? Imagine the workforce development opportunities. Imagine local businesses built around materials recovery. Imagine becoming a regional center for waste innovation, instead of a regional dumping ground.

We could be training engineers, creating jobs, and establishing Rapid City as a leader in sustainable waste solutions across the Upper Midwest. Instead, we are patching gaps and raising rates.

Our landfill is reportedly $8.3 million in the hole. That number will only grow unless we do the work now to rethink our waste stream, engage real partners, and invest in solutions that reduce what we bury in the ground.

Other communities have already moved in this direction: waste-to-energy technologies, reprocessing clusters, advanced sorting systems, and public-private innovation labs. Rapid City has the brainpower, the institutional partners, and the regional role to lead. What we lack is leadership willing to do more than approve annual fee hikes and incremental service cuts.

I believe we can choose a better path. Residents deserve a system that innovates, not one that throws up its hands. We deserve planning, not patchwork. We deserve leaders who understand that waste management is not a burden-it is an opportunity.

Rapid City can either plan for the future or keep paying for the past. That starts with engaging in real, productive conversations with the School of Mines and other regional universities-institutions filled with people who come here to learn, innovate, and tackle the complex problems that shape our future. Let's bring those experts, alongside industry partners and community leaders, to the table. Let's choose meaningful, forward-looking solutions instead of settling for higher bills and smaller bins.