The Big Sioux River flows under a Highway 34 bridge near Egan in southeastern South Dakota. (Photo by Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
The South Dakota Senate threw its support this week behind a bill that puts $10 million toward water quality improvement programs.
Senate Bill 222, which offers $8 million to incentivize water quality initiatives from landowners and $2 million to help improve local water, wastewater and stormwater systems, passed the Senate 28-5.
The bill is sponsored by Sioux Falls Republican Sen. Chris Karr, who said he believes “water is life.”
“If we fail to protect it, I think we fail our next generation,” Karr said when his bill first appeared for a hearing last week in a Senate committee. “This is a caretaker bill for our most important resource in South Dakota.”
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Senate Bill 222 had the support of Andy Bruels of the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources during that initial hearing, which took place Feb. 17 before the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“This bill will allow us to continue doing some of those good, positive things, and has some additional money then from what we currently would have,” Bruels said.
Karr’s concerns center on the Big Sioux River watershed, which has experienced reduced bacterial loads thanks to state-funded conservation efforts to control agricultural waste in recent years, but the money would be available for projects anywhere in the state.
The Big Sioux River flows through Sioux Falls and other cities in eastern South Dakota. It’s considered impaired for one or more beneficial uses, according to the state’s most recent biannual water quality survey. Agricultural waste flowing into its waters is classified as nonpoint source pollution, a category distinct from point source pollution like discharge from a water treatment facility or industrial operation. The bill includes money to address both types of pollution. The money would be accessible through applications to the state Board of Water and Natural Resources.
The appropriations committee postponed action on SB 222 last week and brought it back up on Monday, passing it 8-0 without comment, sending it to the Senate floor. The full Senate took up the measure and passed it Tuesday.
Sen. Curt Voight, R-Rapid City, said his experience planting trees as buffer strips on his own land factored into his support. It stopped erosion, reduced runoff from his farmed acres and improved habitat for wildlife.
“You’re going to take out 120 acres of good farm ground along those banks, but in return, you have a long-lasting effect and impact,” Voight said.
$8 million offered to continue ag pollutant control
The bill would put $8 million toward incentives for riparian buffer strips, which are swaths of vegetation, typically grasses, that are between 50 and 120 feet wide and separate farming and ranching operations from river and stream banks.
Farmers can earn incentive payments through the program, which began with a $3 million appropriation in 2021. Participants agree to keep the grasses uncut in the warmer months and allow grazing in colder months, and to install fencing and alternative water sources to control livestock access to the buffer strip areas.
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Livestock defecate as they stand in rivers and streams to drink or cool off, sending bacterial loads downstream. Runoff also carries nitrates and other water contaminants from grazing zones and cropland to rivers and streams in the absence of vegetation, which can soak up water and waste in plant roots.
Initial uptake of the incentive payments was slow — no farmer signed up in the first year or so — but picked up significantly when the state boosted payouts and adjusted program rules to allow landowners to stack buffer strip payments with other federal incentives like the Conservation Reserve Program and Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, which pay incentives for planting grasses and other vegetation instead of crops. The program also changed to open up payouts to farmers to help them pay for animal waste containment systems in larger-scale livestock operations.
The initial $3 million is spent. Sixty-seven landowners got payments for buffer strips through those funds, and the money also helped pay for two livestock waste systems.
According to the program’s most recent progress report, the animal waste systems were built to manage the waste of 690 animals (350 at one site, 340 in the other), with $89,000 of support altogether from the program.
The bulk of the remaining funds, around $2.9 million, went toward incentives that created 83 miles of buffers along river and streambanks, with vegetation covering more than 1,200 acres of land.
On the Senate floor Tuesday, Karr told his colleagues that the ag department has requests for contracts on 67 more tracks of buffer strip land, and for contracts that would support nine more animal waste facilities.
The money in his bill would support that work, he said.
$2 million offered for local projects
In addition to the $8 million for the riparian buffer initiative, SB 222 adds $2 million to an existing pool of funds available for local water infrastructure upgrades.
The Legislature gives around $5 million to the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources each year for the infrastructure program, through which counties and municipalities can get assistance paying for things like water treatment facility upgrades.
Karr said the extra money will offer communities that lack the resources to follow through on needed upgrades a way to get started without asking as much from local taxpayers.
“There’s always small communities that are dealing with these things, and when they have to take on those projects and they don’t have this support, what happens?” Karr said. “They end up having to fund it somehow in their communities, usually property taxes.”
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