Rosebud Tribe gets $12 million from Interior Department to electrify and upgrade homes

A sample of the homes being built at Keya Wakpala Woiċaġeyapi on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. The project aims to construct hundreds of affordable, energy-efficient houses. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)

Less than a month after an $8 million federal award for electric transportation, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe has been awarded nearly $12 million to electrify homes across the reservation.

The $11.8 million award for Rosebud is the largest in the second round of funding from the Interior Department through the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Electrification Program. Rosebud was awarded $1 million through the program in March.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North and South Dakota was also awarded $2 million in round-two funding, according to a news release from Interior. The money is meant to hook up electricity for homes that don’t have it, transition current homes to “zero-emissions” energy and pay for repairs and retrofits to support zero-emission hookups.

Tribe gets nearly $8 million from federal program that state shunned

The Department of Energy’s Office of Indian Energy reported that 16,805 tribal homes across the U.S. lacked electricity as of 2022 , leaving 54,209 people without it.

The electrification program “continues to provide tribes with the assistance they need to ensure their communities have safe, reliable electricity, which is essential to daily living,” Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland said in the news release.

The awards announced Thursday for 13 tribal communities add up to $71 million, as did the awards announced in March. The money comes from the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022. Twenty-one tribes and tribal organizations in total were awarded funds.

That law also funded the $7.88 million grant for electric vehicles awarded to Rosebud earlier this month. That money flowed through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program called the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant, and is meant to cover the cost of electric buses, electric vehicle charging stations and a heavy duty electric garbage truck.

The state of South Dakota declined to apply for funding through that program, with Gov. Kristi Noem’s office saying there were too many “strings attached” to the money. The city of Sioux Falls offered a similar explanation for its decision not to pursue the funds.

Rapid City applied for and received a $1 million planning grant through the program.

Calls to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s president and vice president were not immediately returned on Thursday.

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