Main Street
Ritchison - New State Climatologist; Baumgarten on disgraced Sen. Holmberg
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Wumanchein. Politics is the focus of today's show and in just a moment we'll chat with April Bondgarden, a reporter from the forum. April and her colleagues at the forum broke the story on the text messages between Senator Ray Holberg and Nicholas Morgan DeRozier that led to yesterday's plea deal signed by Senator Holberg where he will voluntarily plead guilty to a charge of traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual activity. But let's start today's show with a fascinating discussion that connects politics and weather. We'll delve into how even weather has become a political issue as we chat with North Dakota's new state climatologist, Darryl Richardson. In addition to his new role, Richardson continues to serve as the director of the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network. And as we welcomed Darryl to Main Street, we asked him how he became the state climatologist and what the responsibilities and significance of this position are. - I will say first of all, I became the state climatologist for really kind of tragic reasons of our former state climatologist, Dr. Hughes, passed away from cancer earlier in the year. So I would be always like to say, I wish I got the position under better circumstances on that. But you know, the role can be so much or so little really in many ways, depending on what you want to make of it. You know, my focus is going to be really working with other agencies, probably public relations, just communicating things out to the public, but data integrity in the state of North Dakota. How good is our climate record? Going back through that climate record, checking some stuff, checking our stats. We do write on the state climate office, monthly stats, monthly statistics. We'll work probably the thing in agriculture that people will notice the most is the state climatologist in North Dakota, at least, does have a role in the drought monitor. A lot of federal funding is associated with the drought monitor. The drought monitor has positives and negatives, like a lot of things in life, but really try to focus. And I've done that in the last couple of months to make it as accurate as possible. You're never going to be perfect in something like that, but if there is a federal disaster that might need to be put somewhere in the state, a lot of times a governor's office would ask the state climatologist, you know, for the right those reports, to help out what actually happened in those regards too. So really, you could go on and on about it, but those are some of the principal things I'm starting on. Do you look forward, like, a year, five years, 10 years, a hundred years in what you do in your office? I serve two roles. Now I was interim for several months as a state climatologist, but now I am the state climatologist, but I'm also the director of the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network. Intermixed with that, I'm a meteorologist. And for the past couple of decades, I've spoken to thousands upon thousands of people. And a lot of times in the winter, I spend time discussing my logic as to why I think this upcoming growing season is going to be either X or Y, a lot of times I think it's going to be wet, dry, you know, what as the anticipation that will sometimes help people make some plans. My track record is reasonably good at that, but that's more of a meteorological role. So really me, I'm serving a meteorological role, which is forward thinking and a climatological role, which historically is more of looking backwards. You know, and they do interact, you know, in some ways, 'cause you can learn a lot from the past about what's going to happen in the future as well. You made a comment to me just before we started the interview that the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network and Dawn is really almost a kept secret. You know, sometimes it is. The agricultural community generally knows that it's there, but I run into farmers and ranchers in the state that don't know of its existence. The North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network is a network now of, as of this interview, of 202 like full stations, and then we have 12 rain gauge only sites. And what Anne Dawn does, principle is we're monitoring the weather throughout the state of North Dakota. We're also working with the state of Minnesota. We have a small contingent of stations in Eastern Montana, especially the Northeast. And these stations major temperature, precipitation, wind speed, humidity, those types of things, rainfall, and it's also a soil moisture network. This network is one of the largest such networks on the planet. We monitor all these conditions 24, 7, 3, 65, every five minutes. And what we can do in turn in agriculture, for example, is really make projections on say crop diseases. We know because of the weather that this particular disease, usually fungal diseases, say the big sugar beat industry in the Red River Valley to forecast and give them a hint of when sarcospora, the main fungal disease that affects sugar beats is gonna impact their crop. The thing is, they get out and they spray, you know, it's millions of dollars, say for the crystal sugar cooperative, if everyone has to go out and spray. If we can save just one sprain, we're saving hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not in the millions of dollars. Or if we have to spray again, yeah, there's an output on that, but there's a net return on that investment with higher yields, more poundage of sugar per acre. We do that for other diseases. We can forecast say when a certain insect is gonna come out. Okay, this insect is very likely gonna come out in the next few days. Therefore, you can get that insecticide out there to protect that crop ahead of time and perhaps use a little bit less, which is a net savings for the farmers and somewhat of a net benefit for the environment as well. So we were able to do that. Soil moisture, the Red River Valley flooding. What was the soil conditions in the fall? What are the soil conditions in the spring? Is the ground thawed? Okay, past couple of these springs, the ground was thawed. Therefore, in turn, we got more absorption. The river levels are gonna be a little bit less, last Christmas. You know, everyone thinks, well, it was an open winter, it was a dry winter. Fargo had the second wettest winter on record last year, it was crazy wet. We weren't covered in snow, correct? But we were covered with rain that you don't see. There, what you may have recalled, the river, Red River and the Southern Red River Valley in particular was going up. Well, the ground was not frozen yet 'cause it was such a mild winter. Please don't anyone listening to this. I'm not picking on anyone, it's a hard job. The flood forecast was much higher than what actually happened, it was because the ground wasn't frozen. And so if the ground was frozen, their forecast would have been pretty good, it wasn't. And, you know, our data could have been used there and it was used a little bit, and then it got to forecast a little bit better. But it's these simple things. We're working on a project with the upper Missouri river basin. For spring flooding, we're working with agriculture. We've done a large project for the oil industry in western North Dakota and in agriculture. Of course, we work with the National Weather Service on all of this data as well, and really end on so much of this is a value proposition. Or if you want to think of it as a return on investment because we can save money understanding and knowing the past and current weather conditions. What is it that the energy industry is interested in from your office? Believe it or not, gravel roads. And you might be amazed by that. But so much of the Bakken and what's happening, the infrastructures on a gravel road, they have to get to the pads on a gravel road, they have to get oil from gravel road, the wastewater's on a gravel road. So historically, the big four counties out there, say Mackenzie, Dunmond, Terrell, and Williams County, they're large counties. These are like Rhode Island, Connecticut sized counties in a way, it would rain and they would close down all the county gravel roads in the sense of weight limits, you know, like frost limits. And so the big trucks couldn't get out there. So the oil well sat there and you couldn't go out there and do it, sometimes they'd have to shut them down or they couldn't go down there. So of course, they're not getting the oil. In turn, you know, revenue is going to drop, mineral rights are going to drop, tax dollars are going to drop. So what we did is we worked with the big four counties in particular is okay, we put up 50 stations, all these rain gauges, plus they have cameras on it to monitor the gravel roads. How are the gravel roads? What do they look like? Do we have to shut down traffic? Oh, it only rained in zone one. It didn't rain, say in zone two, three, four, and five. We'll keep all of those open. So it's already estimated that that has saved tens of millions of dollars, which of course is again, tax revenue, profits, mineral rights, a huge value proposition, it ended up being, so it was a huge return on investment. So it seems odd, but weather is a big factor in all of that to the point where other states, oh, maybe, you know, we should do something like that. I've been already contacted about. So that's another odd example of looking and doing weather data, how in turn that small investment oftentimes brings very large returns. How do you communicate what you do to egg, to energy, to other agencies that have a need for your data? Do a lot of public speaking, I'm on the phone a lot. I don't sleep a lot. I think it's two words to say that it's public relations in the sense that you have to be out there promoting speaking, giving people this information that's out there, your name, your words to get out there, and then people communicate back with me. You know, the day we did this interview, I had four phone calls this morning, dealing with these issues and people asking, you know, but what they can do, do you have X or Y for me because we need it for all of these different reasons? And that's part of being the director of the North Dakota agricultural weather network, but it's also part of being the state climatologist for North Dakota, you're the keeper of the data, you know, the forum newspaper in Fargo, a lot of times ask me because I have the old record books from more head, more so than Fargo. From the '18 and early 1900s, the old diaries that I have that I can go in there and they might ask a question, why did this, you know, is there, they say something about the weather, what was actually going on? Well, the high was 10 and the low was five below and there was a trace of snow. Well, that doesn't sound like much, but when you read the diaries, it would be some odd things would be in there. You know, the wind picked up a lot at two o'clock in this afternoon and caused blowing snow, which is a bigger deal than than it even is here, but even nowadays it's gonna cause traffic problems or whiteouts and conditions like that. So there's all these little subtle things in those record books that you can find that now we're telling the story, but it impacted them in the past. And then, truth be told, it's of course, it still impacts us today. - Enjoying our conversation with Darryl Richardson, he is the new state climatologist for the state of North Dakota. Darryl, you talked about historical data. What have you learned about trends that you've recognized about weather here in North Dakota? - Our oldest records, continuous records are in Bismarck and they started on October 1st of 1874. So really first full year is 1875. The second oldest records are in Fargo and they started on January 1st, 1881. Fargo's records are continuous. There's a small timeframe in January. I do believe I should know this, but I think it was 1887 that's missing. And I've forever been here for almost 30 years. Like, why was those days missing? And I finally found the answer, the one reporter had the flu. - Oh, and he was the person and he was the person and there was no one else to do it. So we're missing those days and Bismarck's records more continuous, but missing five days out of 140 years. - Pretty good. - You know, you'll look through there, you'll just see trends, you'll see patterns, you'll see periods of wet, you'll see periods of dry, you'll see periods cool years, followed by hot years. Really what you learn is what anyone that lives in the Northern Plains here finds out after a couple of years. We live in a highly variable climate and we can go from one extreme to the next very, very quickly and the record book just gives you more demonstrations of that. And then before our records, you know, there's proxy data, I mean, Lewis and Clark were here back in the day, early 1800s of course, 1804 and 1806 when they came on through those two years and there's Voyager, some records and other proxy data, you know, that we learn. We have, you know, fairly good proxy data. Devil's Lake, Devil's Lake has gone dry in the last 1200 years. Devil's Lake has flown over the banks and gone naturally into the Cheyenne River, which of course we've been trying to prevent recently. You know, really what I learn is there's nothing new under the sun. Yeah, things have fluctuated now. Well, they've pretty much always have done that. Here I want to talk to you about climate change. From this perspective, there are many people that think climate change is very real, that we should be very concerned. There are other people that believe that climate change may be something less to worry about. We're in cyclical weather. We've always been that way. So from your office, what is your message to people? And what should they know about discussing climate change? That is such a difficult thing to answer because I tend to look at things very much from a scientific perspective. Climate change, like many other topics in our society, has really turned into a political discussion. And so in turn, no matter what you say about that topic, there's people that are really angry with me. And that always frustrates me because to me, it's like, oh, come on, people, allow people to have a different opinion, feel allowed to be open-minded and understand things. There's so much catastrophic catastrophizing. If I can say that correctly, that goes on. You know, it's summer, it's hot. You know, this has never happened before. Yes, it has. It was hotter in the past than it has been recently. You know, the facts just stick that out. But you say that to some individuals that get very, very angry with you. And then if you say, well, you know, humans do have some impact, it's just no matter how much it is, you know, you might anger the people that say, well, we have absolutely no impact. I like sticking with facts to me in many ways that aren't arguable, but a lot of times even that, you know, people will argue with me that I'm wrong. And I go, well, here's the data, you look at it. You know, it's science, please be open-minded and understand there's no such thing as a consensus in science. That that word should never be used. Always open to new ideas. You're always open to being wrong on an issue and an experimentation. If you would have told me when I started my career nearly 35 years ago that my job would be so political and people would get so angry, I would have kind of gone, no, that it will never happen in my career. But that's what it comes. So you have to be very, very careful. I will just always, you know, in this interview, you know, emphasize to people no matter where you are in that perspective on things is to keep an open mind. We don't know. And anyone who says otherwise to me is not a very good scientist because we don't know things for sure. Most of the evidence suggests that any changes will be mild and be easily handled by our technology with humans. But again, just me saying that, I will probably, someone will listen to this and write me a, I'll be honest, hopefully not a nasty email about that. And I'm just going, well, read 500 research papers and you might find out something a little bit different. Again, it's hard for me to answer these questions because it's so polarizing now going back and forth. But I tried to stick with the facts, stick with an open mind and I'm also one of those, I don't know everything and I never will. So I respect your opinion, I may disagree with it. Please respect my opinion 'cause you may disagree with that. It goes both ways. - In your 35 years that you've been working in this field, I have to believe technology is massively changed. What you're doing today versus what you were doing 35 years ago, has it? And are there examples? - I think probably the best example is, there's temperature records from the 1600s. They're not the same temperature records we have today. And that is one of the issues. You always have to remember what any climate change thing is we're not measuring things apples to apples anymore. The thing about to go kind of change it to this is end on, for example, we're referenced as a mezzo net. So mezzo is a meteorological terms Greek word, really for middle. So there's mezzo scale weather. And think of mezzo scale weather, you'll get slightly different definitions. I always like looking at it as think of a county or two, a thunderstorm, it would be like a way of a mezzo scale weather event. A lot of times, tornadoes form out of a mezzo cyclone that's within that thunderstorm. So that's mezzo scale weather. But all of our stations to be a really a true mezzo net. This site over here is always, seems to be three quarters of a degree warmer than this area. Well, big deal. No, it's a big deal. Because at three quarters of a degree over 110 day growing season, that crop over there gets a lot more heat units and it's gonna mature faster, might bring better yields. Very, very subtle things. But is it three to four quarters of a degree difference because or a degree different because of the equipment? It easily could because every piece of equipment has different specs. All of our equipment's exactly alike, calibrated exactly the same. Therefore, if that area is warmer than this area, it's because that area is just warmer. Slight elevation change, a little bit more wind, different soil type, different ground vegetation. All of those factors come into play, which again, subtle changes means a lot in agriculture. So to get to your question then with that backdrop is, well, when I started 35 years ago, how would you get 200 weather stations data onto a computer screen that you can watch it instantaneously all the time? And now you can. And now you can. And probably the thing in forecasting is, when I started my career, a three day forecast was probably that third day was approximately as accurate now as a seven day forecast. So I could go out and tell you on a Monday that this weekend looks this way. Is it going to be perfect? Of course not. And you're not going to hit it all the time. But I always like using this term. It's useful, it's useful, it's useful data. It's not perfect, it's useful data. You know, all of my stations cause this thing is perfection, but it's very, very useful. So a seven day forecast now it's useful. When I started the career seven day forecast was a dark throw, you know, as an example and a three day forecast and then what's useful, but you know, things happen. So probably just processing in computer power. Probably the thing I would say was the most changes in the last 35 years. Give me an idea about the staff that you work with, either with end on or through the state climate office. Well, I will say the state climate office is Darryl Richardson. That's you. That's just you're the staff. I'm the CEO. I'm the staff of that. But I have a staff to work through the North to go to Agricultural Weather Network. I have a number of programmers. I'll have a lot of field staff. For example, this summer I have right now seven summer staff, college students for the most part that are working for me this summer, we go around the state cause all these stations have to be maintained, the equipment has to be calibrated, the equipment has to be replaced. We have to do the basic stuff of just trimming them. One of my staff, in particular for end on, has helped me quite a bit with the state climate office because there's a lot of things to do, you know, with my other responsibilities. As I can find say grant monies and other things around, you know, I can hire some staff off of that. And I'm primarily grant funded or do you have some more public dollars that assist what you do? The great thing about end on historically until very recently is that we're a public private partnership. And so in that sense, you know, my salary, for example, right now is a hundred percent supported with tax dollars because I'm, you know, NDSU employees are technically state employees in that sense of the word. Recently, then that's the public part. The private part would be for really the first almost 30 years of existence of end on an end on, by the way, I started in 1989 by Dr. John N's, the former state climatologist before the one had just passed away. And he, sadly, Dr. N's also passed away very recently, so our past two state climatologists passed away this year, sadly. But he started end on in 1989. And what would happen would be that this group of farmers or this individual was usually a group of farmers or a grain elevator with some farmers. Sometimes I've had 30 plus people all throw money, give us checks and go, "Dara, we want a weather station here." So they would buy that weather station, then we would put it where, for the most part, where they wanted to, if it fit my criteria or end ons criteria, then every year they, and then it still happens, they will send us a check for the maintenance fee. We have cell bills. I have a cell bill of 225 stations, cell phones. So you have to communicate, right? We communicate back and forth. So if you think your cell bill is too high, I have the equivalent of 225 cell phones I have to pay for everyone, but that's how we communicate. But they give us money to replace the equipment and stuff. Recently now, really since about 2020, I have gotten a lot of more government support. The Army Corps of Engineers, I got a $7.1 million grant from them. For instance, the Red River Joint Water Resource District. I've gotten about $350,000 to put all season rain gauges so we can measure the liquid and the snow. So we have a better idea of the flooding. The Metro Diversion Authority has given me a quarter of a million dollars to put these all season gauge 'cause even when the diversion's done, it's not like, oh, let's hit a light switch and turn on that diversion. It's a little bit more complicated than that. So they still have to be prepped out to know what's coming through the system, how much precipitation has fallen. And so then I've gotten other grants as well. The state of North Dakota does fund me not only for salaries, but I do get a small stipend of taxpayer dollars to run the network too. But as you can imagine, with the staff in that many stations, it does cost quite a bit of money to keep us up and running. Can people look at this data in real time like you can? Is there a website that we can go to? Most definitely, there's two websites and everyone goes, why is it too Darryl? And I go, we're working on it. They'll get it all together into one. And the reason there's two is we have our main website that's been around for a long time. It does great job if you're on a computer or a tablet. But if you're on a phone, it's not mobile compliant and it's really hard to use. It has a longer address that can get confusing to people. So the easiest way to get on our older website is just type in, and on, ndawn.org. And that will direct you. And when you type that in, it'll direct you to a map of all the current conditions. And that map in front of you will change every five minutes to new temperatures new. And there's a little tab on the bottom that you a whole bunch of parameters. And if you look on the side menus, there's soil, there's a whole bunch of stuff on there. If you go to ndawn again.info, which is weird for people to type in, they're used to com or org. But this is that info. It'll take you to a mobile compliant site. And that's why the difference works great on your phone. And if you look on the top, usually on websites on your phone, if it has a menu that's just three dash lines is the universal symbol, that's a menu, the hamburger. Yeah, and I never thought of it that way. That's a good one. Darryl Richardson. He's the new state climatologist for North Dakota and also the director of Andon, the North Dakota Agricultural Weather Network. It's been a pleasure. Oh, thanks for having me on. More Main Street's ahead. Stay with us. Welcome back to Main Street on Prairie Public. I'm Craig Blumenshine. A bit later in the show, Chuck Lura will tell us about the hidden tracer in North Central North Dakota, the International Peace Garden. That's coming in his natural North Dakota essay. And precision agriculture has promised to revolutionize farming since the mid 1990s. The idea is to give growers more granular data about their operations and new technology to put that information to use. Farmers have more sophisticated equipment and hard data on how their operations perform, as we'll hear in a report from Eric Schmidt of Harvest Public Media. But next, former North Dakota State Senator Ray Holmberg has signed an agreement indicating that he will plead guilty to a child sex tourism charge. A plea agreement filed in the United States District Court Monday says Holmberg will voluntarily plead guilty to a charge of traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual activity. Holmberg was set to go to trial in Fargo in September and a date has yet to be set for his plea hearing. April Baumgarten is a reporter and she and her colleagues at the forum broke the story that began when text messages between Senator Holmberg and Nicholas Morgan DeRozier were discovered and that led to where we are today. - April, welcome to Main Street. - Thank you for having me. - April, remind us who Ray Holmberg was politically. - So Ray Holmberg was a senator in the North Dakota Senate. He was one of the most powerful senators. If not one of the most powerful lawmakers in the Senate, he was the chair for the Appropriations Committee, which gives out money to all the different government agencies is the head of something called legislative management, which decides what committees every lawmaker sits on, what potential bills to take up during special sessions and what studies to look at between sessions. And then also he was the longest serving state senator in the U.S. at the time of his retirement in 2022. - How did you come to learn, April, about the text messages that seems to me that started this road that we ended up with yesterday that we'll talk more about here in just a moment. - So we got a pre vague tip to say that there was a political leader somewhere in North Dakota that was involved in some type or could be involved in some type of federal case. And we were told to just watch federal cases, watch documents, something's going to come up. While I was looking at one case, involving Nicholas Morgan Derrosier, he's a Grand Forks man who was accused of distributing child sex abuse materials and bringing children from the Twin City area to have sex with him in his Grand Forks home. So while before all the federal charges happened, Morgan Derrosier is sitting in jail. We find out in his detention hearing that he's texting a 77 year old Grand Forks man, asking him to, 77 year old man asked Morgan Derrosier to bring over his 19 to 20 year old boyfriend for a massage. What we did was see if we could get the phone list of people that Morgan Derrosier contacted on this particular date, which was in August 2021. And aside from attorneys and bailiffs, the only number that matched someone else was the former number of Ray Holmberg. At least it was once listed on his legislative bio. We also got a log of all the text messages that were sent back and forth on these two days. It was 72 messages, a lot of them within just hours of each other. - Was that the, oh my gosh, moment for you that, okay, this tip now makes sense? - Yeah, it absolutely was, because why would some lawmaker be in contact with someone who is charged with some type of sex crimes? And so we did go to Ray Holmberg and ask him, "Hey, this is what we found. "We found that you were texting this guy multiple times." And it fits the, what prosecutor said of a 77 year old Grand Forks man texting Morgan Derrosier about this massage, which in itself is not that bad, but it does raises some questions of what this meant and what Ray Holmberg have in common or what connection they have. - Was Senator Holmberg still in office at the time? - He was, so this would have been in April 2022, I believe. And we asked him, what were you were texting about? He denied the massage. He said they were texting about patio work and other things. He had been doing some patio, or Morgan Derrosier had been doing some patio work for Ray Holmberg. And that actually was kind of the crux of this whole investigation into Morgan Derrosier was scamming customers through a construction fraud case. And that's how police actually found evidence of sex crimes being committed with Morgan Derrosier. And so he denied the massage, and then we asked, can you show us the text messages? And he said, they're just gone. - How did you're reporting them progressed? - There were some other allegations that came out that he was having sex with young men. And eventually Holmberg decided that he was getting a resigner early. He always intended to retire at the end of 2022. It came a time where he felt that this reporting was interfering with his work as a legislator and also distracting from legislation in general. So he decided to resign in June 2022. About a year later, we find out that Morgan Derrosier asked for Ray Holmberg for a ride to Bismarck for so he could do an interview with consumer protection about his construction fraud case. There was other police reports linking Ray Holmberg and Morgan Derrosier together, including a theft case where allegedly Morgan Derrosier or some of his men stole money from Ray Holmberg. But no charges came out of that because Senator Holmberg declined to press charges. - When was the last time you had a chance to visit with Senator Holmberg? - I believe it was sometime in 2022. It was sometime between he resigned. And when we did a story about him in August of 2022 that his house had been searched by Homeland Security. And that's when we found out that there was items taken from Mr. Holmberg's house, including a cell phone, which is probably why he didn't have that cell phone number anymore, he got a new one. Also a laptop was taken, but since mid 2022 we haven't spoken to him since. He's asked us not to contact him about it or to refer to his attorney mark freeze. - When did you begin to understand that federal charges are imminent? - It was probably about that time when we found out that his home had been searched. It's pretty rare for Homeland Security or any police department in general to not get a search warrant that is not gonna result in some type of charges. It does happen. It just seemed that at some point within the next year of that search being revealed to us that there was gonna be some charges coming down. It just didn't know what. - And then here they came. - Yeah, they came in October, late October of 2023. It turns out that he was accused of traveling to Prague to sexually abuse a minor and then also receiving and attempting to receive as the charges laid out child sex abuse material. - April, when you're writing about Gris and you consider that the alleged victim is a minor and that it is, that is an actual result, does the language that you use cross your mind to many, to some, that might be he tried to rape or he was raping an underage person? That's a hard word. Did you think about the language that you wanted to use to articulate this story to your readers? - Absolutely. We really thought about that for quite a bit and we actually consulted some people about what would be the proper language to use including some prosecutors. Typically the charges, sometimes the charges have not been updated to what modern language is. For example, in a lot of court cases, you'll find child porn instead of child sex abuse materials and porn has a connotation that someone is willing to do that where a child can never consent. As far as the sex with a minor, we did change that to sexually abusing a minor 'cause again, child cannot consent. We did talk about the age of consent in Prague, which is actually 16, but after talking with prosecutors, that doesn't really matter. It's you are making these decisions in the US, you're making plans, you're traveling to another country to sexually abuse someone who was 18 or under in another country. And so that's why we decided on that language. - We know today if that person was 12, was 15, or was a boy, or was a girl. - We know that they were just 18 years and under and I would have to check the court documents again, but I don't believe a gender was disclosed. - So we come to a plea deal with sign yesterday. Did you have a sense of surprise? It was scheduled for trial in September that it didn't go to trial. - I think the biggest surprise was not so much the plea deal. It's that how soon it came. Some of these cases can take over a year to even get to a plea deal. With this type of complicated case where you're traveling across international boundaries, dealing with computers, it could take much longer than a year just to even figure out all the discovery, all the evidence, all the testimony. So I was quite surprised that we got this in less than nine months of the charges being brought. - What were the details of the plea deal as you understand it? - So this is what we understand for the plea deal. He's pleading guilty to that traveling with intent to sexually abuse, child charge. The child sex abuse materials charge is going to be dismissed. I believe that the travel charge does carry a half a year penalty. The maximum is 30 years in prison. However, because of his lack of criminal history, he's gonna be sentenced on the lower end of the guidelines. And what I mean by that is Congress has set up a set of different timelines and lengths of sentences based on your criminal history, other conduct. How serious the conduct was and if there's any true remorse in the case. - So we're looking at about 37 months to 46 months. That's what the prosecutors and the defense have agreed. - This was a federal charge. Potentially he could still face maybe state charges some day or civil charges some day under the purview of this plea agreement. - It's possible the civil side. I'd highly doubt the state side because once you adjudicate something on the federal, the state kind of lets that federal prosecutor should take over if there was another victim or a different type of crime. Of course, we want to avoid dull jeopardy, but if there was another type of crime or another victim, we could see more charges, but I think this is probably gonna be the crux of it. - April, what is your perception of how the public has reacted towards this? Either from the moment the charges were filed, clear until now. - There was definitely a lot of shock initially, especially when we first started our reporting. Some people were wondering how could this man who had done so much for North Dakota, particularly in Grand Forks, he got a lot of funding for Grand Forks, and he was very well known for working across the aisle. So he was a very trusted figure, very respected figure in North Dakota politics. So there was understandably a lot of question about why, or how could someone of this much respect be charged with a crime like this or even be capable of something so sinister. There also was a lot of doubt in pushback. There also was other people who were not quite surprised that they had some inkling, something was going on, but maybe not criminal. I think as the case has progressed, some attitudes have changed, but I think people are still very much questioning what happened and why did this happen? - Is there anything comparative in North Dakota's history that comes to your mind that you're aware of April? - At this moment, the closest I could think is actually in another state in South Dakota, where the attorney general had okay, and killed someone on the road while driving. He was removed from office, I believe, but in North Dakota history, it's hard for me to remember something like where a public official was involved. The closest that we have that is even more current is Jason Doctor, who not quite related, but connected to this case as well, because he's connected through Wayne Stone and Jim and doing a building deal in Bismarck for space for the BACI, and he was convicted of using his power as a lawmaker to speculate on getting that funding through the legislature to make money off of that deal. - April Bond Garden, a former Jamestown Jimmy. She joined the forum in February of 2019 as an investigative reporter. She, along with her colleagues, really broke this story to all of us. April, thanks for your reporting on this, and thanks for joining us on Main Street. - Thank you for having me. - Sleepy Hollow Arts Park in Bismarck invites you to enjoy the timeless magic of Cinderella with this modern Broadway-style version, July 11th through the 20th at 8 p.m. Nightly. It's live with a large cast and orchestra full of energy and talent, supported by professional lights, sound, costumes, all set in an outdoor amphitheater. Gates open at 6.30 with food trucks, games, and a pre-show by Rising Stars. Tickets available at Ekroth Music, Most Subways, or online at shtap.org. - Main Street continues. I'm Craig Blumenshine. Precision Agriculture has promised to revolutionize farming since the mid-1990s. The idea is to give growers more granular data about their operations and new technology to put that information to use. Some of this has come to pass. Farmers now have more sophisticated equipment and hard data on how their operations perform as we hear in this report from Eric Schmidt of Harvest Public Media. - Inside the basement of an old brick building in South St. Louis, a small team of scientists make the final adjustments to a new sensor. It employs a powerful laser to determine the elements and even some molecules that are in front of it. - Right, targets in place. - Viring in three, two, one. - This may sound a little like a rocket launch, but it's actually a prototype machine that can measure soil composition in real time. Pablo Sabron is the founder of Impossible Sensing. - And every clock, clock, clock, every light bullet that you heard gives you a data point. - Data points on nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, even water conditions and indicators of soil health. The sensor can be mounted on the back of a planter to let farmers see exactly what's happening in their soil as they drive through a field. Sabron says that could help farmers apply the exact amount of fertilizer each plant needs. - The real value and the real need here is to give insights, give knowledge, prescribe what to do when. - Sabron says this is the promise of precision ag that knowing what's happening with individual plants will boost productivity and reduce the overuse of fertilizer, which pollutes rivers, lakes and groundwater. But he says the hype hasn't delivered, at least not yet. And Sabron isn't the only person working on it. Allison Doyle is an associate director at the Iowa State University Research Park. She says big ag companies are also looking beyond just seeds, fertilizer and traditional farm equipment. - There's a trend right now in agriculture where a lot of the ag companies are positioning themselves more in the tech space than they are traditional ag. - She says labor is a big driver of this. There aren't as many people farming now than there were in the past. And Doyle says today's farms are much bigger than they used to be. - When you have an operation at large where commodity prices and all the input prices are where they are, you're looking for a tiny little bit of margin wherever you can find it. And so this precision tools become necessary. - But however promising new tools like that laser are, it'll likely take years for them to be adopted on thousands, let alone millions of farming acres. - Experimentation is a risk. - Bill Lee farms about 2,200 acres of corn and soybeans with his brother in Central Illinois. Since he started farming in 1982, he says he's slowly added more precision tools to make his operation more efficient, whether applying fertilizer or planting seeds. - It's not a jump in with both feet, it's a process because it's just too expensive and there's too much at risk to take that flying leap and realize there's not a high jump pit at the end, it's a piece of concrete. - Lee says he's more than willing to spend money on new technology as long as he sees an economic return. It's a financial equation many farmers are familiar with. Chad Zimmerman, agro-food director at the nonprofit BioSTL in St. Louis, says it's unfair to expect farmers to be the only ones to bear the financial uncertainty that can come with changing their practices. - We can't be asking them to take on more risk, to just take a decrease in their profit, to accomplish somebody else's goal. - Zimmerman says new agricultural technology can help growers, but it won't fully deliver the cost in environmental benefits until scaled across millions of acres. Impossible Sensings Sobron says that means big and small companies have to be the ones to prove their precision ag tech really works. - It's on us, right, to really create that value and show it. - He says once farmers see that value demonstrated, they'll adopt those new practices and mass, which is what he expects will happen with his new sensor in a few years. For Harvest Public Media, I'm Eric Schmid in St. Louis. - Harvest Public Media is a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains, including Prairie Public. - Support for Prairie Public is provided by Bill Dean, Realtor with Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Alliance Group of Vismark, specializing in veteran and active duty home loans. Bill can be reached at buildinghomes.com. - This is Main Street, I'm Prairie Public, I'm Craig Blumenshine. Chuck Lura in this natural North Dakota encourages us to visit the International Peace Garden on the border of North Dakota and Canada this summer. - Consider a trip to the International Peace Garden this summer. There's much to see and do there, including exploring a little natural North Dakota and Manitoba in the Turtle Mountain Aspen Forest. The International Peace Garden is located on the International border north of Dunseath. It's widely known for its formal gardens with over 80,000 plants, sunken garden, floral clock and peace chapel. More recent additions include the 9/11 Memorial and the Conservatory and Interpretive Center, which contains the Don Vittko Cacti and Succulent Collection with over 5,000 Cacti and Succulents from around the world. The International Music Camp is also located within the International Peace Garden. So is the North American Game Warden Wildlife Museum, which is dedicated to educating the public of the role of wildlife law enforcement and natural resources. The museum contains several taxidermy mounts and pelts, including several sea and touch items. Less well known, however, is that the International Peace Garden consists of over 2,000 acres in which to explore the local flora and fauna. Be sure to drive, bike or hike the paved three-mile south drive to look around the North Dakota side, as well as the three-mile north drive through the Manitoba side. Both loops traverse around a variety of habitats, including aspen forest, lakes and marshes. The International Peace Garden also supports campgrounds in several picnic areas. There are also hiking and biking trails on which to explore the Turtle Mountain Forest, lakes and marshes. The trails are suitable for all skill levels, including the Lakeview Hiking Trail, a one and a half mile trail, Baroque, Quaking Aspen, Wilds Asperilla, Meadowru, Fireweed, Lavender, Hissep, Rosebester, Grossbeaks, Yellow Warblers, coyotes and beaver are among the plants and animals that may be observed. Exploring Lake Stormed by canoe or kayak is a great way to enjoy nature. Kayaks, paddles and life jackets are available for rent. So make a point to visit the International Peace Garden this summer. I've put links to their website and other information on the International Peace Garden, along with the text of this natural North Dakota. You can access them at prairiepublic.org. That's Chuck Laura, who is a longtime biology professor at Dakota College in Botano, where he published research on ecological aspects of grasslands in the Northern Great Plains in retirement. He continues to share his natural North Dakota essays for the Prairie Public Audience. Dakota Datebook is next. - This is Dakota Datebook for June 25th. Settlers and the Dakotas face many challenges as they cross the plains. There were the financial pressures as they attempted to forge a living from the prairie soils and of course, the extreme weather conditions with a great range in both temperature and weather patterns. The state's record high and low temps occurred in the same year, 1936. The high, fifth highest in the U.S. was an astounding 121 degrees and the low was minus 60, a 181 degree difference. Life generally improved as more amenities found their way across the grasslands. However, there were still dangers and the worst of them might surprise you. The Washburn Leader on February 2nd, 1901 stated that many more people have been killed by lightning than have been run over by stampeding buffalo herds or killed by unwound grizzly bears or by all the other animals of the prairie put together. Later that year, the Dickinson Press reported that John Hanson of Willow City had been killed by lightning while driving cattle on horseback. The horse was also killed. The botanocurrent added that everyone had been rejoicing over the rainfall but with that rain had come tragedy. Most of the reported incidents happened out on the open prairie where there was little tree cover for protection but lightning could also be menacing in town. On the state in 1901, the Fargo Forum and Daily Republican reported that Stephenbaum Gartner, a Hungarian immigrant who had moved to the United States in 1899, had been killed in his home by lightning during a storm that hit the tower city area. The elderly farmer's death was instantaneous and nearly all his clothes were torn from his person. Two other men in the house were shocked but suffered no serious injuries. In modern years, North Dakota lightning deaths have been exceedingly rare with only one death in a recent 10-year period. Today's Dakota Day book written by Jacob Clossen. I'm Annal Quist. (birds chirping) Dakota Day Book is produced in cooperation with the State Historical Society of North Dakota with funding by Humanities North Dakota, North Dakota's largest lifelong learning community. (upbeat music) - Arts programming on prairie public is supported in part by the North Dakota Council on the Arts, a state agency developing, promoting and supporting the arts in North Dakota. (upbeat music) - And that wraps up today's edition of Bain Street. We are deeply grateful for your time and company. Join us tomorrow for an insightful interview and preview. A Thursday's presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the interview will feature our go-to presidential historian, Dr. Michael Patrick Colonnay. That's all coming up tomorrow on Bain Street and we hope that you'll join us. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)