South Dakota
South Dakota lax enforcement allows for illegal conversion of wetlands
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Wildlife and water high quality in South Dakota are generally put at pointless threat attributable to an absence of oversight and accountability of farmers who illegally drain their properties or convert protected wetlands into farmable acreage.
As well as, those that violate the legislation ceaselessly keep away from punishment when they’re caught or are given “good-faith waivers” by native oversight teams usually made up of fellow farmers and neighbors.
In consequence, South Dakota and different Nice Plains states are seeing a unbroken decline in wetland areas which are essential for breeding and internet hosting of wildlife, together with the wetlands which are essential to propagation of South Dakota’s profitable pheasant inhabitants.
Extra NewsWatch:Communities are overusing the Lewis & Clark Water System. An growth goals to satisfy that demand.
The Authorities Accountability Workplace, an investigative arm of Congress, raised issues final yr in regards to the destruction of wetlands for agricultural use within the Prairie Pothole Area, urging more durable compliance measures in parts of South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Montana.
The report was essential of companies inside the U.S. Division of Agriculture which are chargeable for implementing “Swampbuster” provisions from Farm Invoice laws relationship again to the mid-Nineteen Eighties. The report discovered that the companies recognized fewer than 5 violations a yr amongst greater than 417,000 tracked properties in South Dakota and North Dakota, the states with essentially the most wetlands. The companies granted “good-faith waivers” in additional than 80 p.c of circumstances, together with these involving folks with a number of offenses.
Farmers usually management water circulate on their properties via so-called “drain tiling” methods that use a collection of underground pipes to take away water from moist areas and transport it into ditches or onto non-farmlands. The methods create extra dry, usable cropland however are considerably controversial as a result of they upset the pure circulate of water and in the end scale back the variety of ponds or wetlands the place animals reside and breed.
A part of the issue is political. State companies representing the USDA Pure Sources Conservation Service and Farm Service Company are aware of the significance of agriculture, which accounts for practically 30 p.c of South Dakota’s whole financial output.
“Relating to regulating agriculture in a state like South Dakota, the political will doesn’t exist,” stated Don Carr, a Sioux Falls native who served as senior advisor to the Environmental Working Group in Washington D.C. “The rules are on the books, however there’s no enforcement on the bottom.”
Farm Invoice laws cracked down on the observe of changing wetlands to cropland and controlled the usage of drain tile and open-ditch methods to empty seasonal and flooded marshes and sloughs within the pothole area.
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Along with ecological advantages, comparable to enhancing water high quality and sequestering carbon, wetlands assist breeding populations of North American waterfowl and different wildlife and can even assist scale back flooding.
From 1850 to the mid-Nineteen Eighties, South Dakota wetland areas decreased from an estimated 2.7 million acres to 2.1 million acres, in response to the Pure Sources Conservation Service. A more moderen examine by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed that the variety of wetland basins decreased between 1997 and 2007 in each Prairie Pothole Area state apart from Montana.
“It’s a vastly essential and identifiable wildlife mecca,” stated Julie Sibbing, affiliate vp of land stewardship for the Nationwide Wildlife Federation. “The shallower wetlands are in some ways crucial as a result of they’re the primary to thaw in spring, and waterfowl depend on assets like bugs and larvae as they arrive from their wintering grounds. They’ll’t simply go someplace else.”
The GAO report, commissioned by the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Diet and Forestry, advisable modifications within the system utilized by the USDA companies to watch tracts of land for compliance and located flaws within the attraction course of when violations are discovered.
The Pure Sources Conservation Service makes use of a random pattern as an alternative of a risk-based strategy to resolve which tracts to evaluate. From 2014 to 2018, in response to the report, “the NRCS recognized fewer than 5 farmers with wetland conservation violations per yr on the roughly 417,000 tracts in North Dakota and South Dakota.”
“In case you pattern one p.c, you’re not very many, and it’s all random,” stated Steve Morris, a director of the GAO Pure Useful resource and Surroundings staff. “There are different authorities companies that use a extra subtle risk-based strategy with superior knowledge mining to establish doubtless offenders.”
Farmers in USDA applications who knowingly commit violations can have their advantages withheld. If they’re tagged with a wetland violation, farmers will be granted a good-faith waiver by the Farm Service Company and keep their advantages, supplied they take steps towards compliance inside one yr. Selections on waivers are made by FSA county committees, ceaselessly made up of fellow farmers and generally neighbors who may not be goal in such rulings, in response to the GAO report.
“Given the strategy to compliance checks, they may not discover a violation for a number of years. It may very well be much more than 10 years,” stated Morris. “If that violation sticks, they may very well be required to pay again all of their farm fee during the last 10 years, which will be a whole bunch of 1000’s of {dollars}. Generally [the county committee] is afraid that the results are too extreme.”
The result’s a system that ceaselessly takes at face worth an offender’s rationale for destroying a wetland from their tract of land, in response to GAO knowledge.
Extra NewsWatch:South Dakota veteran Jerry Somsen denied advantages after publicity to poisonous burn pits
“The pattern we reviewed included 69 good-faith waivers in North Dakota and South Dakota from 2011 via 2015,” the report states. “We discovered that in all 69 circumstances, the county committees decided that the farmer acted in good religion and FSA permitted the waiver. In 14 of the 69 circumstances, the farmer had a historical past of wetland violations.”
Sibbing, who has been with the Nationwide Wildlife Federation since 2000, calls the method “vastly irritating” and a matter of public curiosity, not solely due to local weather issues but in addition the USDA {dollars} concerned.
“It’s a discount that farmers make with taxpayers,” she informed Information Watch. “If you wish to obtain your subsidies, you possibly can’t proceed to erode water high quality and wildlife habitat.”
— This text was produced by South Dakota Information Watch, a non-profit journalism group situated on-line at SDNewsWatch.org.
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South Dakota
Videos: Gundy, Players Recap Win against South Dakota State
![Videos: Gundy, Players Recap Win against South Dakota State Videos: Gundy, Players Recap Win against South Dakota State](https://pistolsfiringblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/53962121679_afc402ad55_k-1000x600.jpg)
STILLWATER — The Oklahoma State football team beat South Dakota State 44-20 on Saturday to start the season 1-0. After the game, Mike Gundy, Ollie Gordon, Alan Bowman, De’Zhaun Stribling, Collin Oliver, Korie Black and Trey Rucker met with reporters to recap the game.
South Dakota
South Dakota State vs. No. 17 Oklahoma State live stream (8/31/24): Watch college football, Week 1 online
![South Dakota State vs. No. 17 Oklahoma State live stream (8/31/24): Watch college football, Week 1 online South Dakota State vs. No. 17 Oklahoma State live stream (8/31/24): Watch college football, Week 1 online](https://www.nj.com/resizer/v2/P2NH7TDAORCA3K2CFKZ3D37LHE.jpg?auth=27a73779c5e6defa1fa563e3ee42ddc0fe62687da0c8b6ecc5664751c4c0c4a2&width=1280&quality=90)
The South Dakota State Jackrabbits face the No. 17 Oklahoma State Cowboys on Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024 (8/31/24) at Boone Pickens Stadium in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Fans can watch the game with a subscription to ESPN+.
Here’s what you need to know:
What: NCAA Football, Week 1
Who: South Dakota State vs. Oklahoma State
When: Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024 (8/31/24)
Where: Boone Pickens Stadium
Time: 2 p.m. ET
TV: N/A
Channel finder: Verizon Fios, AT&T U-verse, Comcast Xfinity, Spectrum/Charter, Optimum/Altice,Cox,DIRECTV, Dish, Hulu, fuboTV, Sling.
Live stream: ESPN+
***
Here’s a college football story from the Associated Press:
Y’all ain’t played nobody!
It might as well be college football’s slogan. Debates about strength of schedule are part of the fabric of the sport, like marching bands, cheerleaders and tailgating.
With the size of the College Football Playoff tripling in size from four teams to 12 this season — including seven at-large bids — expect the arguments over the relative difficulty of teams’ schedules to increase exponentially.
The posturing and politicking has already begun.
“This is the NFL of college football in my mind,” Nebraska coach Matt Rhule said during Big Ten media days. At Southeastern Conference media days, the NFL was also invoked when the topic steered to schedules.
“As coaches we want to play the best. People forget that when you’ve spent time in the NFL, every week was like that,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. “So when Texas and Oklahoma came into the conference, every schedule was going to get harder.”
The debates aren’t just about which conferences are the best. With super-sized conferences of 16-18 teams, the differences in strength of schedule within leagues can be significant.
The CFP selection committee uses a strength-of-schedule rating provided by SportSource Analytics that includes components such as wins and losses, scoring differential and game location.
Balancing who you played with how you played will be harder than ever.
“There’s a weight on the committee that’s new. I want to see how the committee processes that,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said during spring meetings. “And my encouragement is that this, ‘Well, we have an undefeated team so they’re in’ is not the standard. It never was the standard. Obviously, that stirred up controversy last year.”
Toughest schedules in the Power Four
There are dozens of data-based rating systems to measure the relative strength of college football teams, and all have some type of schedule-rating component.
The AP took three systems — ESPN’s SP+, FEI and KFord Ratings — and averaged their strength of schedule rankings for all 134 Bowl Subdivision teams to determine where each Power Four team’s schedule ranks nationally (all games, not just conference games, are factored in).
Using those projections, SEC teams on average will be facing the toughest schedules this season.
The average strength-of-schedule ranking among the 16 SEC teams is 11.2, from Florida (a unanimous No. 1 among all three systems) to Missouri at 36.7.
Half the teams in the SEC have schedules with an average national ranking of 10 or better, including No. 1 Georgia at 3.7. No. 11 Missouri is the only SEC team with an average schedule-strength ranking below 25.3.
Rating the rest
The Big Ten, now including Southern California, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, is next with an average strength-of-schedule ranking of 26.9 among its 18 teams.
Purdue’s 7.7 average ranking is the highest followed by No. 23 USC at 9. Big Ten favorite No. 2 Ohio State’s average is 34. No. 3 Oregon’s is 26.7.
The ACC and Big 12 are about the same. The 17-team ACC has an average strength of schedule ranking of 49.9. The 16-team Big 12′s average ranking is 47.3.
Assessing strength of schedule
Straight up rankings can be deceiving. How to quantify the difference between facing the sixth-ranked schedule and 26th?
Brian Fremeau, the creator of FEI, does it three ways, asking three questions: How many games would an elite team lose facing a particular schedule? How many would a good team lose? How many would an average team lose?
AP used FEI’s strength of schedule ratings based on good teams in its composite rankings, since good teams are going to be the ones in the CFP race.
Based on FEI projections, the difference between playing Georgia’s schedule (rated 3.4 among the hardest in the nation) and Ohio State (34) is about one more loss for a good team against the Bulldogs’ slate. The difference between Alabama’s schedule and Big 12 favorite Utah’s is about two losses for a good team against the Tide’s.
If these schedule strength projections held — they will change throughout the season — it would then be reasonable to compare an 11-1 Utah to a 9-3 Alabama.
Reasonable to compare doesn’t necessarily mean the one with the tougher schedule should automatically be ranked higher.
“I don’t judge a team on its schedule. I judge a team on how it performs against a schedule, or my system does. And that is a little more of a nuanced take then, ‘Well, we played a tougher set of opponents than you did, therefore, we’re better,’” Fremeau said. “There’s a bit of a balancing act between the two.”
Intraconference debates
The SEC and Big Ten are both bigger and division-less for the first time. That necessitated new tiebreaker procedures to determine which teams qualify for conference title games featuring the top two teams in the standings.
Within the guidelines is an acknowledgment that the rigor of conference schedules will vary when teams are playing barely half the league. After head-to-head and record vs. common opponents are used to break ties, both leagues go to results that favor the team that fared better against the better conference opponents they play.
The ACC, a year ahead of the the SEC and Big Ten in abandoning divisions, has a similar nod within its tiebreakers to strength of schedule.
ACC Associate Commissioner Michael Strickland said the conference used 10 years of data that measures the success of its football teams to help create a new schedule rotation that would be competitively balanced. But the ACC also to had weigh travel now that Stanford, California and SMU are members, as well as protecting some traditional annual rivalries.
The ACC’s fourth two-team tiebreaker is combined winning percentage of conference opponents.
“Our head football coaches suggested that we insert that during our review process,” Strickland said.
The CFP choices
The CFP field announced Dec. 8 will be comprised of the five highest-ranked conference champions, regardless of league, and seven at-large selections. There is no limit to the number of at-large bids a conference can receive.
The most interesting comparisons for the CFP selection committee might end up being between the many conference rivals that do not play each other in the regular season.
What to do with a 10-2 Missouri and a 9-3 Alabama (composite strength-of-schedule ranking, 9.3)? Or Iowa (37) at 10-2 and Michigan (16) at 9-3? Over in the ACC, what would happen while assessing a 10-2 Virginia Tech (68) and a 9-3 Florida State (30.3)?
“Especially when we’re picking (seven) teams now, we’re looking at the loss column with a bit more scrutiny,” Fremeau said. “They’re going to be debating teams like that with a one or possibly two-game difference in record, but a comparable difference in expected schedule rating and they’re going to have that debate about which one they value more.”
(The Associated Press contributed to this report)
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South Dakota
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