Category: Investigations
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A Developer, A TIF, and A Landowner – A Rapid City Zoning Tale
Paul E. Evans didn’t mince words.On June 18, one week before the Rapid City Planning Commission was scheduled to consider five simultaneous rezoning requests covering 127.95 acres of undeveloped land north of Mall Drive, Evans — president of McMahon Investment Inc. — filed a formal written protest with the City’s Department of Community Development. It…
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What is Burning Next to Rapid City’s Neighborhoods? Inside the GCC Zoning Void
The Collateral Damage of Small Town USA Growing up, the shadow of the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant was a constant, quiet hum in the background of my childhood. You learn early on what it feels like to live next to an environmental wild card—a facility where the true cost of “production” isn’t always something…
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The 25 Year Precedent: SATIRICAL EDITORIAL CARTOON
For Immediate ReleaseRapid City, SD –From the Desk of the Press Secretary, Office of Waterfowl Affairs, Memorial Park Division “The Office of Waterfowl Affairs notes the historical precedent set by the 25-year oversight of the aforementioned 563-acre mining operation. We applaud the city’s long-standing tradition of looking the other way when it comes to expansion…
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RETRO-ZONED: Rapid City is Changing the Map to Match the Ground
RAPID CITY, SD – On June 4, 2026, the Rapid City Planning Commission considered four simultaneous rezoning requests covering 562.68 acres of active mining and cement plant operations within Rapid City limits. The petitioner on all four requests was listed as the City of Rapid City Community Development Department — acting on behalf of GCC…
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Permitted but Unzoned: How Rapid City’s 25- Year Zoning Gap Survived a $105 Million Expansion
The 2016 Groundbreaking On the morning of March 18, 2016, Governor Dennis Daugaard stood at 501 North Saint Onge Street in Rapid City and broke ground on a $90 million expansion of the GCC Dacotah cement plant. Mayor Steve Allender was there. The Associated Press covered it. An international cement industry trade publication covered it.…
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How Rapid City Homeowners Unwittingly Subsidized a Global Cement Giant for 25 Years
When a city department leaves a massive industrial footprint unmapped for a quarter-century, it’s not a clerical oversight—it’s an unrecognized tax subsidy. A deep dive into Pennington County property records reveals a glaring disparity between how local heavy infrastructure companies are taxed versus how a multi-national cement operation, GCC Dacotah, is assessed. The Anatomy of…
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The 25-Year Blind Spot: How a 563-Acre Mining Operation Escaped Rapid City’s Oversight
At 7:10 on Thursday morning, most Rapid City residents were still asleep. The ones who showed up to the Planning Commission meeting came because the ground beneath their neighborhood had been shaking before dawn. What they learned—and what the city itself had only recently discovered—was that a foreign-owned cement company had been extracting minerals from…
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Who Decides Rapid City? A Ward-by-Ward Look at Primary Turnout
On June 2, Rapid City held elections in all five wards to determine who would represent residents on the Common Council — the body that sets zoning policy, approves franchise agreements, and controls the city budget. Fewer than one in four registered voters participated. Citywide, council race turnout was 22.8% of registered voters. Statewide primary…
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AI Deepfakes and How They Are Infecting South Dakota’s Election Cycle
South Dakota law prohibits the distribution of AI-generated political video within ninety days of an election unless it carries a specific disclosure stating the content was digitally created or manipulated. With Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primary two days away, at least one political action committee appears to have distributed exactly that kind of content — without…
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Rapid City Proactively Moves to Define Its Cement Plant Future
A century ago, South Dakota stepped in where private industry wouldn’t. With vast deposits of the raw materials needed for cement production sitting in the Black Hills and no private developer willing to build, Gov. Peter Norbeck championed a state-owned plant. Voters amended the state constitution to make it possible, and Dacotah Cement was born.…