By Shawn Hogendorf, Correspondent 

The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, like many communities, is faced with growing energy demands and dependence on outside sources for power, but the tribe’s response has been a bit different.

The SMSC has decided to go “green” while actively exploring local options to supply its energy demands.

The General Council, made up of tribal members 18 and older, passed a directive last year as part of the budget process to look at green initiatives reservation-wide, said Stan Ellison, the land and natural resources manager for the tribe.Dana Christopherson, a SMSC
water resource technician, and
Shawn Kelley, a SMSC
environmental specialist collect sap
for maple syruping. (Sublitted
photos)

Along with buying up and re-establishing native prairies and wetlands on more than 500 acres of former farmland, the SMSC plans on turning 28,000 gallons of waste vegetable oil into bio-diesel fuel to run community vehicles and installing a 2-megawatt wind turbine next to its pow wow grounds to cash in on the free cost of wind.

But cost cutting isn’t the biggest factor, said SMSC Vice Chairman Glynn Crooks.

“It’s more about being environmental. It’s doing what we want to do and being environmentally conscious,” Crooks said. “As a tribe, it’s part of our culture and tradition to be respectful of the land. We hold the land in high regard with our traditions. We feel these are initiatives we should start now. We did the research and felt that adding green initiatives to the buildings is not only right, but it will help the environment.”

As the tribe adds to its building infrastructure, architects look for ways to make them greener, Ellison said. Architects are also going through the old buildings to see how the buildings can be retrofit with green options, he added.

Those green options can be seen on the “green roof” of the water reclamation facility, which lowers the amount of wastewater runoff. The SMSC will also add a second green roof to sit atop the new ice arena.

The water treatment facility and the new ice arena aren’t the only “green” buildings.  

The SMSC Fire Station addition, scheduled to be completed this month, has incorporated four skylights with daylight harvesting sensors to utilize the free energy of the sun to light a training room and equipment bay. The addition will also use six solar cells on the roof to capture energy heat for showers and equipment washing to reduce the use of natural gas.

Along with a green roof, the new ice arena will also feature skylights to harvest the sun’s energy during daytime hours, when the arena is rarely used, to cut energy costs for nighttime lighting by about 50 percent. The ice arena will also capture waste heat from the refrigeration compressors used to cool the rink floor to heat the arena’s seats, which reduces the need to heat the entire arena. The arena will have solar panels to preheat the water used in the Zamboni, Ellison said. 

The SMSC is a major partner in Koda Energy, a joint venture with Shakopee’s Rahr Malting to produce heat and electricity by burning agricultural by-products and grown energy crops. The SMSC will use the by-product of the restored prairie lands in October to produce energy. The idea is to grow a prairie, mow it and turn it into energy at Koda, Ellison said.

 The SMSC also uses prescribed burns to maintain and improve native prairie conditions on the reservation. Wild rice is sowed in community wetlands to preserve and teach children about Dakota culture. Maple sap is collected from 300 syrup taps on 200 community trees, and then turned into hand-made maple syrup over a wood fire. Trees and other native flora are planted. Environmental specialists restore and manage wetlands, survey wildlife and take an inventory of existing natural communities. Hydrologists assess water quality, coordinate the community's Wellhead Protection Program, which plans projects to improve water quality, and implement erosion control.

“The maple syrup harvesting, honey making, forest and prairie restoration are good environmental practice and stewardship, but also used to recreate or maintain remnant portions of Dakota culture,” Ellison said. 

Bio-diesel

The SMSC plans to start powering tribal vehicles with bio-diesel this summer. The plan is to take waste corn and soybean oil from the nine casino and hotel restaurants, transport it to an on-site processing location near the tribe’s public works building and process it for use in the fleet of vehicles used to maintain SMSC land and shuttle customers, Ellison said.

“Basically we will make French fries with the oil, move it. Make bio-diesel, pump it into trucks to shuttle guests around to buy more French fries and then make more fuel,” Ellison said. “This is cleaner than a fossil fuel; it isn’t a fossil fuel; so it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 100 percent over regular diesel.”

The commercial processor basically changes the character of the vegetable oil into bio-diesel, Ellison said. The process adds acids, heats the oil and washes some of the acids back out, and the end result is a little waste water and a lot of glycerin, he said.

The bio-diesel will be a one-to-one replacement for diesel fuel in the summer. The problem lies in the winter, when cold Minnesota weather gels up the fuel, so it will have to be diluted with diesel No. 1 to make the fuel flow, Ellison said.

“Ultimately, we have 28,000 gallons of vegetable oil that is hauled away every year,” Ellison said. “We can turn that waste into a product we are now paying $4 a gallon for, which is a fossil fuel.”

Ellison said the vegetable oil is carbon-neutral when burned in a vehicle because the carbon it releases when it burns is taken out of the air when it is grown.

“There is no added carbon in the atmosphere, it is not a fossil fuel, it saves the tribe money and it produces significantly fewer pollutants,” Ellison said.

The 28,000 gallons of waste oil will turn into 18,000 gallons of fuel a year, which will run most of the tribe’s fleet throughout the year, Ellison said. The fuel will be stored in an above-ground storage unit. The tribe will be able to process nearly 100 gallons of fuel a day from the waste oil, he added.

By processing the fuel on site, Ellison said less time and energy is spent transporting the waste oil and bio-diesel around. The tribe expects that the bio-diesel initiative will pay for itself within one year, Ellison said.

Capturing wind

Wind is also free, and the tribe plans on cashing in.

The SMSC plans on building the footings for a 2-megawatt wind turbine near the pow wow grounds shortly after this year’s pow wow event, said Tribal Administrator Bill Rudnicki.

The wind turbine, a project that has been in the works for about 14 years, will produce about .5 megawatt of energy per year based on wind data that has been collected over the past 10 years, Ellison said. That is enough power to run 500 typical homes.

“It’s a nice way to make energy, but it is a supplement because the wind isn’t always blowing,” Ellison said.

Homes will not come off the power grid as a result of the wind turbine, Ellison added. There will be times that the wind is not blowing and the homes will need to be on the grid. At the times when the wind is blowing and the turbine is producing more energy than needed, the power will flow back into the grid for other homes to use, he said.

The noise of a wind turbine is about the same as that of a home air conditioner, Ellison said. The blades make a whooshing noise, but it can only be heard within 600 feet of the turbine, he said. No homes will be built within 1,000 feet of the wind turbine.

“From a self-sufficiency standpoint, the turbine can’t be beat,” Ellison said. “Wind is free and it burns no fuel at all, so the only environmental footprint the turbine has is whatever came from manufacturing and shipping the machine.”

 Shawn Hogendorf can be reached at (952) 345-6374 or shogendorf@swpub.com.