A West River correspondent with legislative experience says that the 2011 South Dakota Legislature passed some new rules that hurt schools in sparsely populated districts. I review this correspondent's list of sparse school districts in northwestern South Dakota and find an area of over 18,000 square miles populated by just under 52,000 people. According to official fall enrollment data for the current school year, those seven counties have about 6,500 K-12 students in 12 public school districts. (Two of those districts, Belle Fourche and Meade/Sturgis, have 58% of those students.)
Average that out, and you get a "student density" of 0.36 kids per square mile... or, if you prefer to divvy up land rather than children, you find one child every 2.8 square miles. That's sparse.
I understand that some fiscal hawks may consider an additional subsidy for school districts in remote areas to be more than a stained state budget can bear. And while it seems to contradict the American can-do spirit, one can argue that at some point, a community is too remote for efficient government to sustain with tax dollars.
So what might we do to make far-flung South Dakota towns like McLaughlin, Faith, and Dupree more economically viable? How might we bring jobs and revenue to those communities to make a sparse-school subsidy unnecessary?
Nuclear power.
Consider the advantages:
- Northwestern South Dakota is in Seismic Zone 0; i.e., no earthquakes. The biggest tremors you feel in Faith are semis rumbling down Highway 73.
- Lemmon, Bison, and Buffalo are tsunami-proof.
- If Homer hits the wrong button, a 20-mile evacuation zone clears out 5,000 people, not 150,000.
- We can get the uranium from right here in South Dakota, now that Powertech USA has successfully hornswaggled our Legislature into letting them mine for uranium near the Black Hills without any niggling oversight from our own Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
- Make South Dakota the nuclear power center of the country, and we also become the wind power center of the country. Offer the country steady, secure nuclear power, and investors will flock to build transmission lines. And then the supposed single greatest roadblock to putting wind turbines up all over our windy state disappears.
Of course, all that wind might expand the evacuation zone if something does go wrong....
Contrary to Ed Randazzo's wishing away of a serious discussion he finds threatening, I think there is no time like the present to talk about the future of nuclear energy and our willingness to accept the comparative risks of nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, and other energy sources.
So what do you say, sparse school districts? Any takers on a plan to infuse our sparse school districts with nuclear energy revenue?
Ok, evoking Ed as anything other than an acknowledgement of Seasonal Affective Disorder or hizownanium plants your tongue well into your cheek, Cory:
So, geothermal appears not to ping your energy radar, eh? DoE could have holes drilled to the furnace under Winner in less than a year.
Advancing nuclear power plants and wind power in southwestern (Edgemont) and northwestern South Dakota only makes sense. Minimal earthquake worries, no Tsunami fears. Would have to be tornado and ice-proof. Years ago, developers wanted to make Edgemont a medical waste dump and perhaps some nuclear waste, but powering the upper midwest makes much more sense. Perhaps that idea could provide Charlie Johnson's stable education funding source, having a portion of all energy sold taxed for education funding. Should have done that with the oil pipeline if the State wants to reduce its share of education funding.
Larry, there are artesian wells that still almost flow in parts of Tripp County that are warm, but one of your links indicated milli-watts per sq. meter. That does not sound like a real energy bonanza.
The railroads when they first came into South Dakota were promoting the hot water here. I think Little Scotchman Industries at Phillip, SD used hot ground water for heating. It is unfortunately corrosive if my memory is correct.
Perhaps you have some other idea for exploiting the heat.
As for Uranium mining, it is the wrong way to go unless we are interested in further subsidy of GE. Thorium offers simpler, safer alternatives than nuclear power via Uranium.
Impounded stormwater, rainwater, even river water, but not fossil water found in aquifers:
"The study shows that drilling several wells to reach hot rock and connecting them to a fractured rock region that has been stimulated to let water flow through it creates a heat-exchanger that can produce large amounts of hot water or steam to run electric generators at the surface. Unlike conventional fossil-fuel power plants that burn coal, natural gas or oil, no fuel would be required. And unlike wind and solar systems, a geothermal plant works night and day, offering a non-interruptible source of electric power."
This article leads to papers: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070122122322.htm
You are right about Midland, Kadoka, and Philip whose water is heavily corrosive, Doug.
Another point to this post, it was a couple of weeks ago the papers were all reporting that Ziebach County was the poorest county in the Nation.
Interesting idea, nuke plant in Dupree, where there are few people, no quakes, no giant waves washing ashore, except the occasional tornado, blizzard, heat wave. However, set about building a billions-dollar plant, and what do you get? Lots of people moving there, building, maintaining, yearning for good schools.
On a sarcastic note I am tempted to say that is right Cory the only thing NW South Dakota is good for is hunting season and nuclear radiation. In reality I will say that there is a reason that nuclear power plants are all located beside large water sources. Hey wait a minute isn't there a water source down by Madison?
Ryan, I'll bet that's all the more reason the Governor's budget cuts and changes to the sparsity formula will hit those schools even harder: they don't have the local money to opt out for even if they want.
And yes, Bret, lots of water here! Set that nuclear plant by the Lake Herman spillway, run all of our water through as coolant, raise the temperature of Lake Madison 20 degrees for year-round jet-ski action! ;-)
Kevin Woster is desperately holding a flashlight over the move by South Dakota to eliminate a layer of environmental oversight. In South Dakota, another red state attempting to nullify federal health care law and where Republican legislator Don Kopp confuses federal scientists’ findings on climate change with astrologic forces, the hubris in eliminating state-sponsored public comment on in situ uranium extraction while the GOP is actively smothering the EPA, is nothing short of stupefying.
PowerTech has been suing state legislatures as a matter of course while flouting the reports of fracking disasters in the natural gas industry.
Fracking to extract uranium is earth-shattering.
Here's his story: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/opinion/columnists/local/article_c20ea398-51a6-11e0-8b60-001cc4c002e0.html?mode=story