Imagine if Lake Oahe were filled with oil instead of water. We would treat it as one of the country’s greatest economic assets. Pipelines would be flowing. Industries would be built around it. The cost of moving oil west would be a budget line item. Water deserves the same kind of thinking. The difference is that we see the price of gasoline every time we stand at the pump, while generations of public investment have masked much of the true cost of water by the time it pours from a kitchen faucet. Most of us barely notice the water portion of the monthly utility bill. Yet we will pay about $1.50 for a 20-ounce bottle, the equivalent of nearly $10 a gallon. That is why we should look differently at the Western Dakota Regional Water System ’s proposed pipeline. The latest published estimate is about $4.5 billion to move Missouri River water roughly 165 miles west through a massive pipeline and major pumping facilities. Will South Dakota be ready when other states come for our water? The conversation is about to become more visible. The system plans to begin a public campaign in January to build awareness of the project. Before the debate centers on the $4.5 billion price tag, we should ask a more basic question: What is the water worth? The system secured a future-use permit for 20,765 acre-feet of Missouri River water annually, the equivalent of about 18.5 million gallons a day based on projected needs through 2080. Spread $4.5 billion of construction cost across 50 years at that volume, and the simple capital cost comes to roughly 1.3 cents per gallon before financing, treatment, pumping and operating expenses. A penny or two a gallon does not make a $4.5 billion project cheap. It does make the number look different. To decide whether it is worth doing, we must also ask what the water would make possible and what happens without it. Generations of public investment made dependable water affordable. In the process, we forgot what scarcity costs. The Lewis & Clark Regional Water System offers a useful reminder. It took decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to build and now serves roughly 350,000 people in South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. Its system is designed to deliver about 44 million gallons a day, more than twice the capacity proposed for Western Dakota. Imagine southeastern South Dakota without the Lewis & Clark system. Growth would have been harder, more expensive and increasingly constrained by local water supplies. The Western Dakota proposal did not emerge from a wish list. A 2019 South Dakota School of Mines study found that existing supplies could meet demand during average years but become less reliable during prolonged drought. The pressure is easiest to see around Rapid City, Box Elder and Ellsworth Air Force Base. Quotation Generations of public investment made dependable water affordable. In the process, we forgot what scarcity costs. Pactola Reservoir, high in the Black Hills, remains under drought pressure. Rapid City moved it to alert status and extended water restrictions year-round as inflows fell well below normal. The Bureau of Reclamation cut winter releases from Pactola in half to conserve water. Pactola’s managers are doing what reservoir managers are supposed to do: storing water from wetter years for use during dry ones. Then add growth. Not everyone in the Black Hills wants more of it. A new regional water supply would make more development possible. But the demand projections behind the pipeline are based largely on population and water-use trends planners already expect. Without another supply, growth may slow, become more expensive or go elsewhere. Infrastructure is expensive. Scarcity is expensive, too. The pipeline would not create growth so much as remove water as a limit. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES. SUBSCRIBE Rapid City is already growing, and Ellsworth’s impending B-21 mission is adding to population, housing and infrastructure demand. Ellsworth has also shown how expensive it can be to lose water you already have. The Air Force is spending roughly $12.5 million on a water system to restore dependable service to residents whose private wells were affected by PFAS contamination while providing additional system capacity. Federal documents estimate the contamination plume extends approximately 25 miles south-southeast along Boxelder Creek toward the Cheyenne River. Water is remarkably inexpensive until the water you already have is no longer usable. That brings us back to $4.5 billion. If this were oil, we would understand the investment almost instinctively. Missouri River water is one of South Dakota’s great assets, and using a portion of it for western South Dakota’s future should not be dismissed simply because getting it there is expensive. The question is not whether $4.5 billion is a lot of money. Of course it is. The question is what South Dakota wants the future of western South Dakota to look like, and whether we choose that future while we still have options or allow water scarcity to choose it for us. Water has a way of settling arguments. Eventually. Independent Journalism for All As a nonprofit newsroom, our articles are free for everyone to access. Readers like you make that possible. Will you help sustain our watchdog reporting today? SUPPORT