2: Wind Power

Build out the wind power potential of the Great Plains

Other Information:

Natural forces, geography and demographics have placed this vast windshed before the path of over a hundred million northeastern residents. Their need for sustainable energy solution that does not damage the health of their watersheds, forests, and the very air they breathe could not be more clear. COUP's goal of building out the wind power potential of the Great Plains will also help us protect the West's ever more scarce water resources from being depleted and degraded in the process of mining and burning millions of tons of coal every year. Increasing our nation's supply of wind power will directly reduce the carbon load on the atmosphere, nitric and sulfuric acids poisoning our forests and lakes, human health damage to respiratory systems, and genetic damage to future generations from accumulations of mercury. People also need the better employment prospects of wind power. Centralized power plants can not create the significant benefits to local employment levels provided by de-centralized wind power generation. Preparing tribal colleges to offer the education and training needed to realize these local economic benefits is another part of the solution, and COUP is working to build this capacity. Dependence on non-renewable energy sources creates a host of substantially negative human and environmental impacts on our country. Burning coal has been our primary energy solution since we started mining it over 200 years ago.

Stakeholder(s):

• Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe


• Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe


• Lower Brule Sioux Tribe


• Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Sioux Tribe


• Omaha Sioux Tribe


• Rosebud Sioux Tribe


• Sisseton Sioux Tribe


• Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe


• Pine Ridge Sioux Tribe


• Standing Rock Sioux Tribe


• Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Telephone Authority

Objective(s):

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