END OF FEMA GRANT PROGRAM AFFECTS PROJECTS IN SOUTH DAKOTA
SOUTH DAKOTA (John Hult / South Dakota Searchlight) – Drinking water upgrades for Mobridge, efficiency boosting software systems for Rapid City and a tornado shelter for Chancellor are among the South Dakota projects that now count as formerly funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA announced the axing of its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program last month in a press release lambasting the Biden-era creation as “wasteful” and “politicized.”
The 2021 program aimed to direct $1 billion in funding toward infrastructure projects to help communities across the U.S. “reduce their hazard risk” as they “build capability and capacity.”
The press release from the Trump administration’s incarnation of FEMA says all awards from 2020 through 2024 are rescinded, and that all the money that hasn’t been distributed won’t be. The unspent $882 million will flow into the U.S. Treasury or be reallocated by Congress, the release says.
FEMA falls under the leadership of Homeland Security Secretary and former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem.
The program “was more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters,” the FEMA release says. “Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need.”
The South Dakota Democratic Party issued a press release of its own on the cessation of the grant program, one trashing Noem’s agency and Trump’s policies as damaging to South Dakota communities.
“Because of these cuts, city and county leaders will now have to scramble to either figure out where the rest of the money will come from, or ditch their projects altogether, leaving their communities vulnerable to disasters” wrote Shane Merrill, chair of the state party.
According to a tally of federal cuts compiled and updated weekly by the administration of Noem’s successor, Gov. Larry Rhoden, $8.9 million in South Dakota projects were set to benefit from BRIC grants. Based on South Dakota Searchlight calls to local governments involved in the projects, it’s unclear if that total figure represents the amount of grant money lost, or the total project costs including other funding sources.
Mobridge water treatment
Some BRIC money was collected and spent before the shuttering of the program. The city of Mobridge got $311,000 for phase one of a three-phase project to replace the piping that delivers Missouri River water from Lake Oahe to the city’s water treatment plant on its way to residents’ taps.
That first round of BRIC money paid for engineering, planning and a dive team survey, all undertaken in preparation of the second round of BRIC funding, which Mobridge Finance Officer Heather Beck said would’ve set the physical piping upgrade portion of the project in motion.
“We had been told by the FEMA folks that if phase one is awarded, they had never seen the second phase not get awarded,” Beck said.
The anticipated grant assistance with the pipe rebuild was a boon to Mobridge’s larger $11.2 million drinking water project. Water bills paid by the north-central South Dakota community’s residents are enough to keep the city “self-sustaining” for the most part, Beck said, but the cost of major upgrades can be a heavy one to spread around.
“With only 3,200 people, it takes more from them to be able to pay for these projects,” Beck said.
The city’s on the lookout for more state or federal funding sources now, Beck said. The city had taken in some grant funding from the American Rescue Plan Act for the wider water treatment project already, but “a lot of that $11.2 million has had to be borrowed.”
City leadership has reached out to South Dakota’s congressional delegation in hopes that some of the grant funding can be restored through a program that’s not shuttered.
Mobridge’s nearly $4 million BRIC-funded project, with grant funding passed through to the city by Walworth County, was the largest project on the $8.9 million list of grant-supported projects in South Dakota. The city was set to pay 20% of the cost, meaning it lost out on about $3.2 million.
Rapid City building codes, tornado shelters
The project with the second-highest price tag on the state’s tally of lost grant funding was $2.6 million. That project was meant to help Rapid City cover the labor costs of updating its fire codes, pay for software that would allow citizens or companies to submit documents like building permits or developer plans online, and to upgrade its computing systems to connect departments and avoid duplicate work between departments managing development and permitting.
A letter from Mayor Jason Salamun to the U.S. Senate majority leader, South Dakota Republican John Thune, says the work aligns “with the priorities of the Trump-Vance administration.”
“Our project was specifically designed to enhance operational efficiency within our local government, ultimately saving taxpayer dollars and reducing administrative burdens for both city staff and the general public, including housing developers,” the letter reads.
Rapid City’s share of the project was $623,093; the BRIC program was set to cover a little under a million dollars.
The city also hoped to create an inventory of potentially hazardous buildings, although Grants Division Manager Jamie Toennies said decisions on what the city might do to address those buildings would come later.
“Opportunities are there to proactively keep the buildings from getting in worse shape,” she said.
The city is on the lookout for more funding sources, Toennies said, as “we had identified this need before this grant.”
The third-largest South Dakota project was $485,973 for the town of Chancellor, home to 316 people and one large ethanol production plant. According to a map of FEMA-funded mitigation projects maintained by the state, the town was in line for BRIC support of a severe wind and tornado shelter.
Hill City, a city of around 1,000 in Pennington County, had asked for, but wasn’t awarded, money for a floodplain study of Spring Creek, which runs through town. Finance Officer Stacia Tallon said the federal share of the $167,200 project would have helped the city determine where to put replacement box culverts to mitigate flood risk, and to map out areas that might be safe for building.
The box culvert piece of the project in particular is still necessary, Tallon said, although it’s unclear when or how the city will be able to move forward with the plans.
“We’re still looking at them, but they’ve been kind of put on the back burner,” Tallon said.
SENATOR ROUNDS ASKS INTERIOR TO CONSIDER SOUTH DAKOTA FOR FEDERAL TRIBAL POLICE ACADEMY
WASHINGTON, D.C. (John Hult / South Dakota Searchlight) – For the second time in as many years, South Dakota Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds has formally asked the federal Department of the Interior to establish a tribal law enforcement training center in his home state.
This year’s request took the form of a letter from Rounds to Doug Burgum, who served as North Dakota’s governor before ascending to the role of Interior secretary for the Trump administration.
Rounds and U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota agitated for a regional Bureau of Indian Affairs law enforcement training center last year. Johnson had previously pushed for field hearings that would bring members of Congress to tribal areas to learn the challenges of policing them.
Their advocacy last year dovetailed with the controversy sparked by comments from former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Noem, who’s now secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She said Native American reservations in South Dakota were overrun by Mexican drug cartel members and that some tribal leaders were benefiting from it. She also said that unemployment and absent parents had left Native American children bereft of hope.
Leaders of all nine tribes in the state voted to ban her from their lands in the months that followed. Some have since rescinded the bans.
Noem, who said a lack of tribal law enforcement exacerbates public safety problems, worked with Attorney General Marty Jackley to sponsor an additional state-level basic law enforcement training academy session last summer that gave priority to Native American recruits.
Typically, potential Native American officers from South Dakota attend 12 weeks of basic law enforcement training in Artesia, New Mexico — 1,000 miles or more from home.
The 11 recruits trained in Pierre last year were able to get their certification to work in policing in South Dakota, but were also given the chance to remotely complete an additional BIA training module called the Bridge Training Program that would typically take place in New Mexico.
As Noem sparred with tribes rhetorically and pushed to train more tribal officers in South Dakota’s state training academy, the congressional delegation pushed the BIA to establish a regional training center in Pierre.
Such a center, they argued, would allow potential Native American police officers to train during the week and return home to their families on weekends.
Rounds reiterated that point in Monday’s letter to Burgum.
“Many tribal law enforcement leaders believe that the distance to the New Mexico facility is a barrier to recruitment,” Rounds wrote.
He suggested that an existing training center could serve as a satellite training location for tribal policing, and pointed to last summer’s training in Pierre as an “encouraging” sign that such a setup can work.
INTERNATIONAL STUDENT FACING DEPORTATION GRADUATES FROM MINES
RAPID CITY, S.D. – An international student in western South Dakota overcame Kristi Noem’s attempt to stop her from graduating Saturday, while hundreds of people protested on the other side of the state where Noem received an honorary degree and delivered a commencement speech.
The international student is Priya Saxena, from India. She received two degrees from South Dakota Mines in Rapid City: a doctorate in chemical and biological engineering and a master’s degree in chemical engineering.
Noem’s U.S. Department of Homeland Security — which she has led since resigning as South Dakota governor in January — has been trying to deport Saxena since last month, asserting that Saxena’s permission to stay in the country should be revoked because she was convicted four years ago of failing to move over for flashing yellow lights, a misdemeanor. The action is part of a broader immigration crackdown by the Trump administration.
Saxena’s student visa is not scheduled to expire until 2027, and if allowed to stay in the country, she could apply for an extension to work in fields related to her degrees.
Saxena and her attorney, Jim Leach, of Rapid City, sued and won a temporary restraining order that assured Saxena’s graduation and will halt the government’s action against her until at least next week, when she has a hearing on her request for a court order to stop her deportation while the lawsuit proceeds. Saxena and her attorney have said in court filings that she has not committed a deportable offense, and have called the government’s actions “lawless.”
Saxena’s graduation went smoothly Saturday as she crossed the stage and received applause from the audience at Summit Arena in Rapid City. Her attorney and a university spokeswoman said Saxena preferred not to make any public comments.
