The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to establish a five-day-a-week Vet Center in Grand Forks on a six-month trial basis, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said Wednesday.
The VA is working to locate an operating space, according to a news release, but it's unclear exactly when the extended operations will begin.
About 20 veterans now use Grand Forks Vet Center services every week. The services include free counseling to veterans and their families for problems such as depression and substance abuse, according to Herald archives, but they're only available one day a week here.
North Dakota has lost more post-9/11 service members to suicide than combat, Heitkamp's news release said.
"Hopefully this will be a place of continuing support for our returning vets," Heitkamp said in an interview. "If you're one day a week, and they don't know what day that is and that's not the day that works for them, we aren't going to get the vets the help that they need."
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Heitkamp's news release notes that if use of the Vet Center doesn't increase after the expansion, the "VA will reassess need in Grand Forks and surrounding community."
EAS funding
SkyWest Airlines will add an additional weekly flight from Devils Lake to Denver International Airport starting in July.
Heitkamp announced Wednesday nearly $7 million in federal Essential Air Service funds were made available to continue air service to Devils Lake and Jamestown.
SkyWest will provide each of those communities with 12 nonstop or one-stop round trips per week from July 1 to June 30, 2018, according to a news release. That's one more trip than SkyWest currently provides out of Devils Lake, said John Nord, Devils Lake Regional Airport manager.
"We're very happy ... they reselected SkyWest for our carrier," he said. "We look back that, 'Hey if they're adding another flight, they must be happy with how everything is going.'"
The EAS program was created to "ensure that smaller communities would retain a link to the National Air Transportation System, with federal subsidy when necessary," according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's website. The annual subsidy for SkyWest in Devils Lake is almost $4 million, and for Jamestown it's nearly $2.8 million, according to a DOT order provided by Heitkamp's office.
Passenger boardings at Devils Lake have increased by almost 56 percent since last year, and Jamestown's has increased by almost 40 percent, according to the the North Dakota Aeronautics Commission.
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Nord said Great Lakes Airlines, which suspended service in Devils Lake in early 2014, also bid for the EAS contract. Ultimately, it's up to DOT to select the carrier, but Devils Lake supported SkyWest, Nord said, adding Great Lakes was proposing using a smaller plane to Minneapolis.
"We're already using a 50-seat regional jet going to Denver," he said. "So when you sit down and compare service ... it was just pretty easy for us to support SkyWest."
EERC agreement
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded $9.5 million to the UND Energy and Environmental Research Center.
The award is an expansion of the $2.5 million joint cooperative agreement made in 2015 to develop technologies that would reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel, according to a news release from Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.
