U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service Deputy Administrator Jessica Zufolo made the announcement Monday morning during an annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in St. Louis.

In a following statement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Today’s funding will provide residents of these rural communities with high speed internet connections to improve health care and educational opportunities and connect to global markets. In addition to providing much needed services to rural businesses and residents, these investments will increase jobs, not just in the near term, but through expanded opportunities in rural areas.”

The USDA provided three examples of how the funding would improve quality of life for rural residents. In Minnesota, they said, Rural Development Broadband Loan Program funds will be used to extend Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative’s existing Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network to serve rural communities in north-central portions of the state. The program will offer service to more than 45,710 households and businesses through a company that has been operating since 1952.

In North Dakota, the funds will expand Polar Communications Mutual Aid Corporation’s broadband system throughout 18 exchanges to provide voice, video and high-speed data systems. When the project is completed, all of Polar’s subscribers will have access to broadband.

Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative Inc., based in Indiana, will begin the process of designing and building broadband services to its 5,711 subscribers spread over 1,148 miles.

USDA is providing $478.6 million in funding to companies that meet eligibility requirements. Companies slated to receive funding, by state, are:

Colorado

• Eastern Slope Rural Telephone Association, Inc.–$18,725,000 will be used to upgrade the existing fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) network, capable of providing modern broadband services to subscribers in 10 exchanges.

Idaho and Utah

• Albion Telephone Company–$17,075,000 in loan funds will be used to install 453 miles of buried fiber optic cables throughout the proposed FTTP system, providing nearly 60 percent of subscribers with FTTP.

Illinois

• McNabb Telephone Company–$3,700,000 in loan funds will be used to make system improvements, including constructing new FTTP facilities. A total of 115 miles of buried fiber optic cable will be deployed to improve service to subscribers.
• Shawnee Telephone Company–$30,286,000 in loan funds will be used to construct FTTP facilities, allowing Shawnee to provide voice and data services at speeds of up to 100 Mbps to both residences and businesses.
• McDonough Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$15,728,000 in funds will be used to upgrade the rural areas with FTTH technology. Approximately 766 miles of buried fiber cable will be deployed to provide over half of the subscribers with access to improved broadband service. McDonough has been serving its rural subscribers for over 60 years.
• Wabash Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$21,867,000 will be used to install 777 miles of buried fiber optic cables and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system. The FTTP system will enhance service to 70 percent of Wabash’s subscribers.

Indiana

• Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$29,139,000 in loan funds have been awarded to Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative Inc., (PSC) which provides telecommunications services to nearly 6,000 subscribers over approximately 1,150 square miles in southern Indiana. This loan will enable PSC to start the process of designing and building FTTP to enhance broadband services across the service area.

Iowa

• Mediapolis Telephone Company–$13,401,000 in loan funds will be used to make system upgrades to the transport system and the network architecture from the existing copper Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) to FTTP broadband systems.
• Griswold Cooperative Telephone Company–$12,747,000 in loan funds will be used to complete a system-wide FTTP network, enhancing broadband service to all subscribers.
• La Porte City Telephone Company–$9,867,000 in loan funds will be used to make system improvements, including installation of a FTTP broadband network that will serve all of the borrower’s subscribers. A total of 297 miles of buried fiber optic cable will be deployed, enabling downstream data rates of up to 20 Mbps.

Kansas

• The S & T Telephone Cooperative Association–$29,814,000 will be used to implement a full FTTH design to allow the migration to 10-20 Mbps broadband speeds to all subscribers and to provide IPTV in the near future.

Minnesota

• Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative–$19,749,000 in Rural Development Broadband Loan Program funds will be used to extend Paul Bunyan’s existing FTTH network to serve the exchanges of Park Rapids Rural and Trout Lake in North Central Minnesota. With this extension of their network, Paul Bunyan will be able to provide advanced telecommunications services to over 45,710 establishments (households and businesses) across all service areas. Paul Bunyan has been operating since 1952 and has been a telecommunications borrower with the Rural Utilities Service since 1953.

Nebraska

• The Hemingford Co-operative Telephone Company–$10,280,000 will be used to upgrade the outside plant with optic cable, fiber optic drops and FTTP equipment. These funds will add 377 fiber miles of fiber optic cable.

New Mexico

• Roosevelt County Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$12,358,000 will be used to deploy new equipment and install FTTP equipment to enhance the broadband network.

North Dakota

• BEK Communications Cooperative–$26,746,000 in loan funds will be used to expand a FTTH broadband system. Upon completion of this RUS-funded project, 100 percent of BEK’s subscribers will be served by fiber.
• SRT Communications, Inc.–$24,832,000 in loan funds will be used to install 2,143 miles of buried fiber optic cable and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system. The FTTP system will be constructed in areas outside of towns in twelve of the borrower’s twenty-six exchanges. The service areas in the towns will continue to be offered DSL at speeds of at least 55 Mbps with its relatively new copper plant.
• Polar Communications Mutual Aid Corporation–$32,939,000 in loan funds will be used to expand the Borrower’s FTTP broadband system throughout the borrower’s eighteen exchanges. The upgraded system will help meet current and future requirements for delivery of voice, video and high speed data to subscribers. Upon completion of this RUS-funded project, 100 percent of Polar’s subscribers will be served with broadband via various technologies.

Oklahoma

• Terral Telephone Company–$4,855,000 in loan funds will be used to convert the existing copper network to a FTTH system, and connect new subscribers. The proposed FTTH deployment includes construction of over 62 miles of fiber plant in and around Terral, and the replacement of the existing softswitch and power plant. This FTTH deployment will create nine jobs and save seven jobs.

South Carolina

• Sandhill Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$5,930,000 will be used to provide for system improvements, including purchase of a new switch.

Tennessee

• North Central Telephone Cooperative Corporation–$27,069,000 will be used to upgrade portions of North Central’s outside plant and network infrastructure by deploying a FTTP network.

Washington

• Inland Telephone Company–$24,823,000 in loan funds will be used to expand Inland’s FTTP broadband system and connect new subscribers.
• The Toledo Telephone Co., Inc.–$18,091,000 in loan funds will be used to install 292 miles of buried fiber optic cables and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system, offering enhanced service to all Toledo subscribers.

Wisconsin

• Union Telephone Company–$13,308,000 in loan funds will enable Union to deploy approximately 336 miles of fiber, which will provide approximately 60 percent of Union’s subscribers with access to improved broadband services.
• Marquette-Adams Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$19,781,000 Marquette-Adams will use loan funds to complete a system-wide FTTP network, including over 370 miles of new or modified buried fiber, providing enhanced broadband service to all subscribers.
• Vernon Telephone Cooperative–$24,143,000 in loan funds will be used to install 1,206 miles of buried fiber optic cables and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system. The FTTP system will offer enhanced broadband service to 90 percent of subscribers.

Wyoming and Colorado

• Dubois Telephone Exchange, Inc.–$11,391,000 in loan funds will be used to expand the FTTP system to provide video and data services over an optic network with speeds up to 100 Mbps. Included in this loan is $9,462,000 for construction and engineering in Wyoming and $1,929,000 for construction and engineering in Colorado.

President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One (Pic by The White House, via Flickr)

North Dakota is on its way to becoming the first state in the country to have an operating health insurance exchange program. Each state is required by the Affordable Care Act to have some infrastructure in place by January 2013 for an exchange. Florida remains one of the lone states dragging its feet.

The Grand Forks Herald reports that North Dakota is on track to pass legislation that would set up its state exchange.

According to the Herald:

House Bill 1474, drafted by the Health Care Reform Review Committee after the regular legislative session ended this spring, would create a North Dakota health insurance benefit exchange system.

Under the federal legislation, all states must have an operational health benefit exchange by Jan. 1, 2014 or the secretary of Health and Human Services must create one.

Pam Sharp, director of the North Dakota Office of Management and Budget, said the key component of the exchange would be a new website that would allow residents to compare costs and benefits of affordable health insurance plans.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report (.pdf) that said as of “August 17, 2011, 39 states and the District of Columbia have introduced some form of legislation promoting exchange implementation.”

“Among the 34 states where the legislation would fully establish a state exchange program, ten states enacted such bills into law,” the group reports.

Only 11 states, Florida among them, have not introduced any legislation to establish a state exchange program.

Florida is among only five states not using federal grants meant to help the state plan and research for an exchange. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that “Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma reportedly will return exchange grant funds.”

This week, health advocates touring the state warned that Florida had done “virtually nothing” to follow the law’s mandates. The groups also warned that the state would cede their authority to the federal government if the state did not meet the deadlines.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that next year it will require oil and gas companies to publicly disclose the release of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas, which can be deadly in high enough concentrations.

The industry has been exempt from divulging the release of H2S to the federal Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for 17 years. The removal of the exemption was first published in the Federal Registry in October and finalized last week. Conservation groups praised the decision.

“[H2S] may leak from drill rigs and refineries, but is often also deliberately burned off, exposing nearby communities to its harmful effects,” the environmental group Earthworks stated in a press release.

Hydrogen sulfide, which occurs naturally in oil and gas drilling, can sicken workers and community members who are exposed to high enough concentrations of the gas.

“Common symptoms of exposure to long-term, low levels of hydrogen sulfide include headache, skin complications, respiratory and mucous membrane irritation, respiratory soft tissue damage and degeneration, confusion, impairment of verbal recall, memory loss, and prolonged reaction time,” Earthworks warns. “Exposure to high concentrations can cause unconsciousness and can be fatal.”

The gas was a hot topic on Colorado’s Western Slope this summer when state regulators were accused of misleading the public concerning the release of H2S at several Noble Energy natural gas wells on the Roan Plateau in 2009.

Regulators for the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) were accused of not being totally forthright on the issue of H2S release at Noble wells in 2009 until a whistleblower came forward.

Silt Mesa resident Carl McWilliams was a contractor for Noble when he became sick—an incident that led to a U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fine. Another contractor died of what the coroner determined was a heart attack unrelated to H2S emissions, but McWilliams disputes that conclusion and now says he’s been ostracized by the industry.

The COGCC found that four Noble wells had H2S levels greater than 100 parts per million (PPM) in 2009, and the agency in September posted its findings on the COGCC website (pdf). In a separate fact sheet (pdf), the COGCC states that levels of between 200 and 300 PPM can lead to “marked conjunctivitis and respiratory tract irritation after 1 hour of exposure.” Levels higher than 500 PPM can lead to loss of consciousness and possibly death in 30 minutes to 1 hour.”

“Our initial priority, obviously, was to look at current circumstances and to ensure that there were not significant risks to public health, safety or welfare, and I think we satisfied ourselves that there is not,” COGCC director David Neslin told the Colorado Independent in September.

The EPA is engaged in a rulemaking process on hydraulic fracturing emissions, which has prompted threats of litigation from states such as North Dakota, where a major drilling boom is going on in the Bakken Shale.

Community activists in Colorado and elsewhere in the nation say the EPA must do more to regulate the industry as domestic oil and gas production steadily increases in areas with more dense populations than the Western Slope of Colorado. Groups around Colorado accuse local and state regulators of dropping the ball on issues ranging from air emissions to water quality to setbacks for rigs near homes, businesses and public buildings.

The proposal was being considered for the legislature’s special session but three Republicans on the committee opposed the bill.

State Sen. Terry Wanzek (R-Jamestown) told the Fargo Forum that the legislature needs to keep its focus on other issues: “It almost feels as if I’m being asked to choose sides.”

North Dakota AFL-CIO President Gary Granzotto and Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 167G President John Riskey released a joint statement criticizing the decision to block the bill.

“Workers at the Drayton and Hillsboro American Crystal Sugar plants have been forced off the job by their employer,” Granzotto and Riskey wrote. “These workers did not walk off the job; they have been locked out of their place of work.”

Workers who live in Minnesota are eligible for unemployment benefits if they’re locked out of their jobs.

“It’s time that North Dakota recognize the difference between a strike and a lockout,” they said. “It’s unfortunate that these North Dakotans are being treated differently than others in our state who have lost their jobs.”

About 1,300 workers have been locked out of their jobs at American Crystal Sugar since Aug. 1. They recently rejected the company’s most recent offer by 90 percent.

The company and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union resumed negotiations on Monday, but a statement from a company official indicates that talks broke down at some point on Tuesday. The company is now offering the workers a revised final contract, and has given the workers until 11 p.m. on Nov. 1 to accept the offer or continue to be locked out.

Workers have been locked out of plants in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa since Aug. 1.

The statement issued Tuesday by Brian Ingulsrud, vice president of administration for ACS, said, in part, that the company began this week’s negotiations with a high expectation of resolution.

“Despite public comments by the union regarding significant movement, their offer failed to adequately address the issues identified by both parities as being the keys to reaching an agreement,” Insulsrud said. “Their new offer had no change in position whatsoever regarding the issue of subcontracting and job security. In the area of health care they offered very minor changes, but continued their demands for free health care insurance. … The company offered to revise the subcontracting language to guarantee that no employee or position will be eliminated due to subcontracting. The company also offered to delay by a year implementation of the transition to the management health care plan.”

John Riskey, Grand Forks, N.D. BCTGM Local 167G president, issued his own statement indicating that the company is proposing only minor changes to a contract that workers have already refused.

“Company executives seem committed to continuing a lockout that is tearing the community apart, putting hardship on 1,300 families and costing a farmer-owned cooperative an unsustainable amount of money,” he said.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Minnesota farmers have harvested 95 percent of their sugar beet crops. Sugar beet producers in North Dakota are also nearing completion.

An action alert from the AFL-CIO said that the company was attempting “to break the employees’ union” and is “risking this year’s harvest and the stability of local communities by sacrificing these good jobs to sweeten its corporate profits.”

To: American Crystal Sugar CEO Dave Berg

Sugar workers have always stood shoulder to shoulder with American Crystal Sugar and growers to protect and advance the sugar industry. They worked hard for the sugar program, Farm Bill, and stood up against the North American Free Trade Agreement and many other unfair trade agreements that hurt the sugar beet industry.

Together, the workers, company, and farmers have built the local economy, supported families, and helped communities flourish.

We respectfully urge you to reconsider your take-back plans and let your union workers stay on the job.

Shar Knutson, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, believes the lockout at ACS is placing at risk the entire U.S. sugar program that places a limit on how much sugar can be imported.

“An agricultural bill backed by Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Republican Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and John Thune of South Dakota would eliminate the sugar program entirely and is gaining serious momentum in Congress,” said Knutson.

Previously, he indicated, such plans to eliminate the sugar program have been quashed by a coalition of organized labor and industry officials.

“Labor-friendly members of Congress without sugar beet farms in their districts or states supported the program in previous years because of the once-positive labor relations at companies such as American Crystal,” Knutson said.

“But with American Crystal’s recent treatment of union workers, it’s going to be extremely difficult for organized labor to get behind the sugar program once again. Labor-friendly members of Congress from non-sugar producing areas also will have a hard time supporting an industry that is treating workers as poorly as American Crystal is right now.”

The lockout affects workers at facilities in Moorhead, East Grand Forks, Crookston, and Chaska, Minn.; Hillsboro and Drayton, N.D.; and Mason City. American Crystal Sugar is a cooperative that provides 38 percent of the nation’s sugar from sugar beets and 15 percent of all sugar production.

Judicial bypasses are a way of protecting young women from possible harm, particularly young women who fear they will be abused or kicked out of their homes if a parent finds out she was seeking an abortion. Most parental notification laws have a judicial bypass provision.

However, few states has such strict restriction on access to a bypass as Florida now has. Opponents of Florida’s new law have said it “endangers the health of young women.”

The Associated Press reports that courts are now ordered to start following the changes in the process created by the new law:

One revision increases the time judges have to make rulings from 48 hours to three business days.

Another one repeals a provision that automatically grants a waiver if the deadline is missed.

Instead, the minor can ask the circuit’s chief judge to hold another hearing within 48 hours. That decision must come no later than 24 hours after the hearing.

The new law also requires judges to consider a minor’s maturity to make a decision on abortion.

The new restrictions also require that young women seeking a bypass have access only to the circuit court in which they reside. Before, young women could appeal to any circuit court in the state. Many argued the restriction could present a violation of privacy —especially for young women living in small towns. (Currently, this strict provision is only law in North Dakota.)

Another controversial aspect of the law has also been its history in the Florida Legislature. One of the last policy-makers to introduce the measure is married to the House sponsor of the law that is now in effect.

State Rep. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, is the wife of John Stargel, who introduced a similar measure as a state senator in 2006. According to a LifeNews.com article, John Stargel has long been interested in giving judges less latitude in granting parental notification waivers.

John Stargel is now a circuit court judge, which means he is among a number of judges to whom young women can appeal in order to get a waiver for a parental notification needed to obtain an abortion.

On Valentine’s Day, Personhood began a matching program and challenged supporters to help raise $50,000 to make $100,000 to push anti-abortion rights legislation in North Dakota, Montana, Iowa and Mississippi. Today is the last day of the challenge.

Mississippi is the biggest target, as it has a personhood amendment on the ballot that will get a vote in November. If passed, the constitutional amendment would effectively make abortion illegal.

The organization claims to have helped reduce the amount of days abortions can be performed in Mississippi (where there is currently only one surgical abortion facility, in Jackson) from six to two “killing days” a week, according to a newsletter from Personhood USA co-founder Keith Mason. The newsletter also notes that Mississippi is “a moral, conservative state” and the amendment has bipartisan support.

Amendment 26, as drafted by Personhood, reads: “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” However, the organization is quick to note that it does not condone cloning.

In order to get the proposed amendment on the ballot, the group was required by the state to collect 89,285 certified signatures from registered voters, but they collected more than 130,000 — about 106,000 of those certified, according to Personhood Mississippi.

North Dakota is another major focus, where the state House recently passed the Defense of Human Life Act.

Jennifer Mason, communications director for Personhood USA, told The American Independent every affiliate has lawyers that help draft legislation that is then presented to state leaders. But it’s a tricky business.

“Legally speaking you can mess it up,” Mason said. “We try not to leave any children out, not to dehumanize any human being.”

She explained that Personhood is against legislation that gives provisions for women who have been raped, victims of incest or who might be endangered by carrying a baby to term.

She also noted that the organization does not condone the murder of abortion providers.

“We are absolutely opposed to violence, in or out of the wombs,” she said.

“Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void. This has been a difficult decision to reach, and I am aware that it will have indeterminable implications,” Vinson wrote in his opinion.

The case is the second in which a judge has ruled the mandate to be unconstitutional. Several other judges have dismissed challenges to the law, citing no evidence that the law is unconstitutional.

Pawlenty, who joined the suit in his capacity as governor but did not have the authority to make Minnesota a party to the suit, praised the decision.

“Today’s court ruling correctly affirms that President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress’s health care takeover violates the U.S. Constitution,” he said in a statement. “An individual health-care mandate is an unconstitutional power grab by the Federal government and drags our health care system in the wrong direction. This ruling is a big victory for states’ rights, the U.S. Constitution and market-based health care reform. I was proud to join this federal lawsuit challenging Obamacare’s individual mandate and am optimistic that higher courts will uphold the ruling.”

Among the 26 states that joined the lawsuit are Minnesota’s neighbors Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Wisconsin joined the lawsuit several weeks ago after a Republican governor and attorney general were sworn in. Iowa joined at the request of its new Republican governor and has the unique distinction of both supporting and opposing health care reform. Its Democratic attorney general filed papers in support of the law’s constitutionality but didn’t block the governor from filing the lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.

North Dakota and South Dakota have been a party to the lawsuit since April 2010.

The case will be appealed in the 11th circuit appeals court.

Conrad had been open about his ambivalence about running for another term and those doubts almost certainly increased following a 2010 election that decimated the Democratic party…

Outside interest groups — the conservative American Future Fund and liberal-aligned Commonsense Ten — have already run ads in North Dakota, suggesting that the race would be a major priority for both national parties.

His retirement is bad news for the Democrats — North and South Dakota has reliably voted Republican in presidential elections but elected Democrats to Congress until recently.

For the last eighteen years before the 2010 elections, North Dakota had two Democratic senators and one Democrat at the state’s lone seat in the House of Representatives — dubbed ‘Team North Dakota’ giving the small state more influence on committees (especially the House and Senate Agriculture Committees) than it would have had otherwise. Rep. Earl Pomeroy lost his seat in 2010 after airing a last-ditch ad featuring him showing his driver’s license and saying, “I’m not Nancy Pelosi, I’m not Barack Obama” U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan announced that he would not run for re-election in early 2010 after he faced the possibility of a serious challenge from popular Gov. John Hoeven (R).

South Dakota, too, elected Democrats like Sen. Tom Daschle, Rep. Stephanie Herseth and before them, Sen. George McGovern — all of whom were defeated in big Republican years of 2004, 2010 and 1980, respectively. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) may well be the last Democrat of the Dakotas after 2012, as he is up for re-election in 2014. (He survived re-election in 2002 by 524 votes.)

The race might not be a foregone conclusion for Democrats as it was in 2010 — dthere isn’t a popular candidate like Gov. Hoeven in the race, and Barack Obama only lost North Dakota by eight points in 2008.

As they did during the health care debate, liberals will probably point out that the Dakotas have four senators, though the states’ cumulative population is only a little larger than that of the Bronx.

Dave Weigel notes that in 1889, congressional Republicans made the Dakotas two states to increase their representation in Congress. Belatedly, that could happen.

So, for a moment, let’s take Dorgan at his word when he says that his decision was indeed driven by a desire to pursue other things, like ”some teaching” and working on “energy policy in the private sector.”

The latter is an interesting focus, because Dorgan, while a progressive on a host of issues — things as diverse as health care and Cuba policy — is also one of the most conservative Democrats when it comes to energy policy and climate change. That conservatism was on display just a few months back, when Dorgan joined 13 other Senate Democrats in urging leadership to grant coal-buring power plants more free-polluting permits under the upper chamber’s climate change bill.

The lawmakers argued that the current formula, which allots permits based half on emissions and half on sales, is unfair to the higher-emitting utilities (i.e., those that burn coal). They didn’t mention that their suggested change would also undermine the entire purpose of the bill, which is to encourage such high-emission facilities to move to cleaner fuel alternatives.

So when Dorgan says he’s now interested in private sector energy policy, does that mean he’ll continue the fight against the Demcrats’ climate change bill? If he goes to work for the coal industry, it can mean nothing else.

UPDATE: Kate Sheppard, the environmental reporter at Mother Jones, also fears that Dorgan’s leanings will leave him protecting coal during the cap-and-trade debate.