Peripatetic blogger Larry Kurtz has Black Hills dirt permanently under his fingernails. He offers a remarkable account of the 2002 Grizzly Gulch fire, which he watched from the north side of Deadwood as the town faced imminent destruction from flames rising 800 feet. Only a switch in the wind saved Deadwood and perhaps, says Kurtz, Whitewood and Sturgis.

Also remarkable, says Kurtz, is the resiliency of the ecosystem. What we see as disaster, nature treats as healthy renewal:

Using my cell phone I gave live updates to Jack Daniels at the head-banger radio station. His home was just one of hundreds threatened by the blaze. His family returned to a near-miss now a place where oak is returning to those canyons at the foot of Pillar Peak.

In two hours during the following Spring I picked over 200 pounds of morels which carpeted the skidder trails. A hard rain made another 1000 pounds unusable.

Ten years later aspen is exploding into the hills where pine once infested these draws and buttes [Larry Kurtz, “Deadwood Not Dead Nearly Ten Years After Grizzly Gulch,” interested party, 2012.05.08.

Lawrence County Commission candidate Robert Romanov drew some skeptical hissing and clucking from audience members at a Spearfish public forum last week when he suggested that one response to the pine beetle infestation is to plant different trees. He also recognized the forest’s ability to come back from fire.

I look with dismay on those reddish-brown beetle patches on Spearfish Peak, not to mention the wide-ranging beetle devastation further south in the Hills. But whether those trees come down by beetle, blaze, or chainsaw, we should keep in mind the long view. Nature used to clear out patches of the Hills with fires like the Grizzly Gulch blaze all the time. And as Kurtz shows us around Deadwood, those fires clear the way for new life and healthier Hills.

So, would any of my conservative friends care to run an EPA critique against the Lake County Commission? If I were a local Kristi Noem or John Thune, I’d be bleating about the Lake County Commission’s delay of a commercial development on Lake Herman for what sound pretty much like environmental concerns.

At its Tuesday meeting, the Lake County Commission heard Terry and Bev Timmer’s request for a conditional use permit to turn the old Dirks Resort into a campground. The site, on Lake Herman’s secluded south bay, would make a lovely camping location. It’s within easy hiking and mountain-biking distance of the south end of the Lake Herman State Park recreation trail. Given how fast the state park campground fills up, it would likely have no trouble drawing customers. It would also have one notable advantage over its main camping competition, Prairie Village: campers at Dirks Resort would enjoy lake access.

Ah, but there’s a sticking point. Dirks Resort happens to sit in the only residential area on that part of the lake. Adjoining property owners worry that lake access for the campground will bring lots of traffic and noise to the area—more ruckus, apparently than the mere existence of up to 123 campsites back away from the water. Heck, I sometimes wonder if the folks down on that side of the lake are giving me a wary glance when I ride my bike over their fun dipsy-doodle access road (I try to pedal quietly); a horde of summertime swimmers and campers would really shake up the neighborhood.

If landowners object to the lake access, Timmers could close off the lake access, but it seems that action would torpedo the campground’s business prospects. If I hauled my gear to a lakeside campground, could see the water from my tent, but was told the shoreline was off limits, I’d be torqued. The Prairie Village campsites are much farther up from the water, but guests can stroll a quarter mile down to the west gate and enjoy the Ikes’ lake access right across the road. Having a Lake Herman campground without easy lake access doesn’t sound viable.

Commissioner Chris Giles said he is ”a little more concerned about the sewage, percolation tests, holding tank, the water permit.” As Lake Herman Sanitary District chief, I can say that Bev Timmer has contacted me about the regulations on such matters and is looking into the proper wastewater options for the property. Timmers haven’t submitted any system designs yet (that will come when/if the conditional use permit is approved), but given my knowledge of the area, I can say the low-lying land and tight space in the area do present valid concerns for the proper disposal of the excretions of a couple hundred campers a stone’s throw from water’s edge each weekend.

These concerns about aquatic and aural pollution led the Lake County Commission to vote 4–1 to delay action for four weeks. According to KJAM, Commissioner Bohl dissented: “Bohl said the Timmers had already been delayed quite a bit with the county’s Planning commission and they have made attempts to meet the commission’s requirements.”

Attempts? Come now, Dan, even you remember Yoda’s admonition in The Empire Strikes Back: ”Do or do not. There is no try.” I’d like to be assured that they’ve met the legal requirements, not just that they’ve tried.

There’s money to be made at Lake Herman… but my fair lake remains home to a lot of folks who prefer their peace and quiet to economic development. And the Lake County Commission, for now at least, is backing that sentiment, one that can’t help reminding us of the regulation-hating rhetoric our GOP leaders throw at the federal government.

Poor Gordon Howie. No, really, I mean this: I sympathize with Gordon Howie, who is seeing property he co-owns torn up by thoughtless motorists:

A few Rapid Valley residents are frustrated that freewheeling drivers turned the area near their neighborhood pond into a rutted mess this weekend.

Turtle Pond property manager and part owner Gordon Howie shares the neighbors’ irritations but says the destruction is not a new problem for the undeveloped park, especially after a rainstorm.

“It’s disappointing, but not a surprise,” said Howie, a former state senator. “We’ve tried to put obstacles in the way, huge rocks and other obstacles to keep people off. The people who are intent on being destructive just find a way around them.”

Although privately owned, the Turtle Pond area, at the corner of Long View Drive and Reservoir Road, north of S.D. Highway 44, is open for public fishing. South Dakota Game Fish & Parks has stocked the pond with fish in the past, Howie said.

Neighbor Pat Cromwell said she called the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office four times over the weekend to report mud-bogging ATVs and pickups.

“They are ripping the daylights out of the pond here,” Cromwell said. “People are having fun without thinking about what they are doing to it. It’s mindless vandalism” [Holly Meyer, "Mud Boggers Making a Mess of Rapid Valley Pond," Rapid City Journal, 2012.04.16].

Attentive readers will recall that I’ll have no truck with motorheads who can’t have fun and tread lightly. Sportsmen (and I suspect we have to use the term loosely here) have an obligation to respect the land, whether that land is owned by all of us or by a few private landholders who generously allow public use of their property.

But note that even arch-Tea Partier Gordon Howie has to admit that sometimes he needs more government. It takes a strong man to admit that his philosophy is incomplete.

Hat tip to Nathan Johnson!

Well, that’s depressing: a new report from Environment America ranks the Big Sioux River as having the 13th largest amount of toxic industrial pollution discharges in 2010. The sole discharger into the Big Sioux measured in this report is Smithfield Foods, John Morrell’s processing plant in Sioux Falls, which dumped 2.95 million pounds of yuck into the public waters past the Falls.

(Speaking of toxic discharge, the featured recipe on the John Morrell website this morning is bologna and egg breakfast burritos.)

In all of the surrounding states, only Nebraska has one facility causing more harm to waterways… and that’s the Tyson Fresh Meats processing plant pouring 4.62 million pounds of pollution into the Missouri River. I’m assuming this source is the Dakota City beef facility, for whose toxic discharges Tyson paid the feds a two-million-dollar penalty in 2009.

Surprising to me is the fact that even with all that Bakken-frackin’ oil activity, North Dakota saw much less toxic discharge into its waterways than did South Dakota, under a million pounds. Maybe South Dakota state government is putting us more at risk of polluted waterways with its pressure on local governments to approve giant hog farms than with its push to drill for oil.

I want to be suspicious of Governor Dennis Daugaard. Anybody who campaigns for office saying there is not budget crisis then turns around after winning and argues we have to slash the state budget ten percent warrants some suspicion.

I am thus looking at the Governor’s veto of House Bill 1228 and trying to figure out if doing the people’s business or taking a whack at us Lefties.

HB 1228 offered tax refunds for the construction of big wind farms (building costs over $50 million) and environmental upgrades at big power plants (300 megawatts or more). This bill was the compromise that kept House Republicans from pressing a scheme that would have negated the upcoming referendum on Governor Daugaard’s larger economic development tax refund program.

Governor Daugaard cited that referral in his veto message, saying the Legislature should not monkey with big corporate tax refunds until the voters have made clear via Referred Law 14 their will on such economic development policies. The Governor also nodded to fairness for smaller wind energy projects: he cites a proposed 20-megawatt wind farm that evidently wouldn’t meet the $50-million threshold for the tax refund.

On the fiscally wonky side, Governor Daugaard brands HB 1228 unacceptable in its lack of a fiscal note. He sees HB 1228 sending millions of dollars out of state to ratepayers getting electricty from the Big Stone power plant in northeast South Dakota. He also complains that the bill was a “continuous appropriation,” not a tax break, and thus should have been passed by a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority (which is all HB 1228 got in the Senate). The Governor’s veto means HB 1228 will need a two-thirds vote tomorrow to survive.

The Governor offers rational reasons for his veto. I am again relieved to see that he will respect the referendum process, even when he’s “disgusted” by it. But is the Governor’s referendum respect an excuse to take a swipe at the green priorities of the Dems who referred the Governor’s corporate welfare plan? And can we count on the Governor to stand up for fairness for small-scale renewable energy producers with policies like net-metering?

The Governor’s fiscal argument also smells just a little bit. There is only one fiscal note posted for the 2011 Legislative session, and that fiscal note is not for the Governor’s large project refund plan (2011′s HB 1230). The Governor also signed all sorts of bills this year that had no fiscal note. He supported modifying his own education reform bill this session to avoid a two-thirds new-appropriations vote, even though his HB 1234 supposedly obligates the state to invest $15 million more a year in teachers. Is that a “continuous appropriation”?

I admit that my suspicion of the Daugaard agenda may have me stretching for quibbles. On pure policy consistency, we may do better to follow the principle of the veto of HB 1228 across our economic policies: require all businesses to pay their fair share of taxes, regardless of size, industry, or closed-door wheeling and dealing with the likes of Russ Olson.

But let’s see what you think of this veto, dear readers… and let’s see what our legislators say tomorrow during Veto Day in Pierre.

Last year the Cornell Global Labor Institute knocked the snot out of TransCanada’s inflated jobs claims for the Keystone XL pipeline. Now the same nice folks come forward to argue that we need to balance the claims of Keystone XL’s economic advantages with a clearer accounting of the pipeline’s negative economic impacts.

GLI’s latest report, “The Impact of Tar Sands Pipeline Spills on Employment and the Economy,” makes the following points:

1. Keystone XL promises twenty (20, not 20,000, not 130,000, Kristi) permanent pipeline operation jobs in the six states it will cross.
2. In the same six states, agriculture employs 571,000 people and generates $76 billion in economic activity.
3. In the same six states, tourism employs 780,000 workers and generates $67 billion in economic activity.
4. Oil spills are generally bad for agriculture and tourism.

The backers of Keystone XL exaggerate the jobs and dollars Keystone XL would generate. They never give us the full picture of how much we will lose in clean-up costs and interrupted jobs and economic activity when that pipeline springs a leak (and TransCanada has done a poor job of predicting the reliability of its craftsmanship). Sensible policymakers must consider the externalities right alongside the profits Big Oil wants to make.

I’ve already had to scold Jeff Barth once for facilitating Republican baloney, on his support for the Keystone XL pipeline. Now Barth goes for a second dip in Kristi Noem’s fantasy pool, saying he supports the Congresswoman’s sideshow dust regulation bill:

“I am not one of those who would ridicule Noem on this issue,” he said. “Dust is an issue for many businesses and local governments, not just farming. Those of us who drive on gravel roads learned many years ago to roll up your car windows as another vehicle approaches on a dry day.

“Who thinks banning gravel roads is a good idea?” he asked. “We should not regulate people out of business (mining, woodworking, smelting, concrete, farming, lumber, grain elevators and grain transportation) with our economy so weak” [Tom Lawrence, "Noem's Dust Bill Divides Politicians But Has Gained Ag-Group Support," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2012.03.02].

The ever unoriginal Dakota War College chortles:

It’s always nice to see Democrats coming to their senses and agreeing with Congresswoman Noem. Especially when she is right to not trust the EPA, stick up for farmers, and advocate for jobs building a pipline.

Someone must have forgotten to tell Barth that before he can support reasonable, bi-partisan and intelligent policies, he must first win the Democratic primary vote where Kristi Noem is always wrong and never ever even remotely close to being right [some faker who hides behind a pseudonym, "Hey Jeff, Which Primary Are You Running In?" Dakota War College, 2012.03.06].

I don’t expect any Democrat to retool his or her message based on what DWC says. But the Republican Establishment blog offers some stopped-clock wisdom. In the interview with Tom Lawrence, candidate Barth resorts to the same sort of fear-plying lies that the Congresswoman he wants to replace uses to persuade voters that her dust bill is more than a political distraction. Banning gravel roads? Please, Jeff, show me one document, one news report, one quote that says that’s what the EPA is after.

Dust control is a genuine concern for local governments: see the spiraling costs McKenzie County (ND) has faced with increasing Bakken oil patch activity. Counties don’t do dust control just to be pains in the neck; they do it because excessive dust genuinely threatens health and quality of life (see also here and here).

As with Keystone XL, Rep. Noem is using her fantasies about dust regulations as a front for her effort to let her big corporate donors do whatever they want. The dust regulations she wants to ban are products of her imagination. Everyone challenging Kristi Noem, Democrat or Republican, has an obligation to, yes, ridicule Rep. Noem out on her bogus stats and bogeyman arguments. On two significant issues, Barth is failing to do that.

Linda Krsnak is a fourth-generation Lake County farmer. She and her husband Jimmy run Linda’s Garden, an honest-to-goodness family farm, not an ethanol factory, producing real food that people right here in South Dakota eat. The Krsnaks raise 300 varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, berries, and flowers. They sell that produce at farmers markets and supply restaurants and Sanford Hospital. They donate healthy food to area charities. They do educational outreach with tours of their farm and workshops on their sustainable farming practices. If city folk dropped by Lake County asking to see a specimen of the ideal farm, you wouldn’t take them to Rick Millner’s latest stinking feedlot; you’d take them to Linda’s Gardens.

But if the Brant Lake Sanitary District has its way, the Krsnaks may find their farm smelling like Millner’s outfit:

Linda says the Brant Lake Sanitary District plans to put another sewage pond about a football field’s length from their property.  She and Jimmy have major concerns about the food they grow — and about the water table.

“Those sewage ponds are in the middle of the skunk creek aquifer,” says Linda.

Linda tells KSFY that under DENR safety criteria, the new pond would be too close to their property, and it would be too deep into the water table.

Dave Templeton with the DENR says the pond can and will be built safely.

“Our design criteria are recommended design criteria, not required,” says Templeton, “We have no evidence of an aquifer under that site or that would be impacted by his facility.”

Jerry Lammers, an attorney for the Brant Lake Sanitary District, says the proposed sanitary pond has met with approval locally and nationally, from the Lake County Commission to the EPA.

“By all accounts, it should improve the situation there considerably,” says Lammers.

Lammers says the new pond will have the latest technology to help with containment, but the Krsnaks say they still don’t believe it will be safe.  Based on a recent assessment they say the current sewage ponds have already lowered their property value by 30%.  The couple says they could lose twice that amount- and even their business- with the new pond.

“I’m too old to start over.  Everything we have, we put into this place,” says Jimmy.

“It is terrifying.  You can’t even describe how it feels to be threatened in such a way that we have absolutely no control over,” says Linda [Denise DePaolo, "Chester Grower's Livelihood Threatened by Sewage Pond," KSFY, 2012.02.17].

Remember: if you develop housing subdivisions right, there’s no need for a central sewer system. Keep houses spread out, build only on land that can properly absorb and break down sewage, and onsite septic tanks can safely dispose of the wastewater that landowners generate.

But when developers want to turn the country into a town, when city folks want to pack houses cheek by jowl like on Phillips Avenue or on Lake Madison, when landowners want to flush their poop away without having to take any responsibility other than paying their sewer bill on time, you end up with a big central sewer system and sewage ponds that make your poop someone else’s problem.

The Krsnaks are working hard to document this threat to their livelihood on the Linda’s Gardens blog. Krsnak says the Brant Lake sewage pond would back up drainage, raise their water table, and potentially flood their fields and root cellar. The sewage ponds could contaminate that rising water table and endanger their crops. They also find themselves already enjoying the stink of Chester poop in the nearby ponds from February on through the growing season; the closer Brant Lake pond could make their farm unlivable.

The Krsnaks report getting no support from the state at all. Funny, considering how eagerly Pierre declares its support for agriculture. If the Krsnaks were a giant dairy, Governor Daugaard would be on the scene protecting their livelihood. But since they are just a little vegetable farm, their fate apparently does not matter in Pierre.