Submitted
Oceti Sakowin Solve Fellowship

Standing Rock Episcopal Initiatives

Team Leader
John Floberg
Basic Information
Our Solution
Standing Rock Episcopal Initiatives
Our tagline:

Recreating spaces to be sustainable for holistic community use.

Our pitch:

(1) Enrolled tribal members make up the membership of the Episcopal Church on Standing Rock.  They have family gatherings, community events, feeds and celebrations of various kinds that need a public space.  This part of the world can be extremely cold or very hot which makes public spaces costly to heat or cool.  Most all of our members don't have financial resources that can be given to provide for the utilities to heat or cool the buildings.  At our 3500 sq ft facility in Cannon Ball we have a combination of a 10kw solar panel electric system and a geo-thermal heating/cooling system.  During our costliest month of the year our congregation pays $165.00 for all lights and heat.  The same building size is costing us more than $1,200.00 for the same month in Ft. Yates.  

(2) Our first preference to retrofit the property in Ft. Yates is to install a geo-thermal system and install a modest solar panel system to operate the system. If this system proves too costly, there is another stand alone system that would create a hot water system heat source for some areas of the building.  This project is to retrofit a building with a sustainable and renewable energy source as a pilot project in Indian Country.  This is one of the aspects of creating affordable solutions on Standing Rock and other reservations.  

There are some rare opportunities of building from scratch that integrates renewable energy sources.  There are scores of buildings that could accommodate renewable sources of energy such as geo thermal or solar.  Geo thermal will cost more than $50,000 to install.  There are solar units that cost $10,000 or less to install.  The benefit to Geo thermal is that it heats or cools and does that 24 hours a day.  Solar units work when the sun is out only.  Heat would need to build up during the day and be held in the building for evening use.

There are many churches that can serve as community buildings throughout the reservations in the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana if they were more affordable for use during fall, winter and spring months of the year.  Once in place, we can offer this project to Interfaith Power and Light an organization that we have been doing some work with in the past year and a half.

(3) Ft. Yates is rural and isolated.  It lacks buildings for smaller groups of people (5 - 100) that are affordably heated in our coldest weather.  Such facilities would be used for alcohol and drug free feeding programs, youth programs, movies, wrestling practice, culture classes and programs that include language retention, group counseling, AA and Al-Anon 12 Step Groups and family gatherings.  The project of making a facility sustainable through the use of renewable energy provides our community with these good things.  

Where our project is located:
Fort Yates, ND, USA
The topic our project addresses:
  • Solar
  • Infrastructure
About Your Solution
About Your Team
Partnership Potential
Solution Team:
John Floberg
John Floberg