FBSR Concerned About State Permits and Pollution Discharges

**The following is a Press Release issued in response to an article on expired water permits in the state of South Dakota

Friends of the Big Sioux River, a non-profit organization working toward improved water quality in the Big Sioux River, is warning that South Dakota’s state agency charged with protecting public health and natural resources from water pollution is inadequately funded and staffed to fulfill its statutory obligations.

“A recent investigative article in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader revealed serious staffing inadequacies in South Dakota’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR),” said Dana Loseke, chairman of the Friends of the Big Sioux River group.

Loseke pointed out that although South Dakota’s DENR fell behind updating more than one hundred pollution discharge permits affecting the state’s surface waters, including the Big Sioux River, the agency  testified to state legislators that it did not need additional funding for staff to review permits.

“The Secretary of the DENR  testified before the Joint Appropriations Committee  of the state legislature during the 2018 legislative session,”  Loseke added, “that DENR did not need additional funding, and they made this claim while their obligations to protect citizens and resources intensified from both urban and agricultural expansion across the state. Equally concerning is the fact that DENR failed to ask for even minimal budget increases to stay abreast of the cost of living increases all state agencies encountered over the past decade. .

According to Loseke and Friends of the Big Sioux River, the DENR is now playing catch-up with many expired permits that are not updated  to deal with the increase in wastewaters from growing cities and expanding businesses. Permits for pollution discharges must be renewed every five years or they continue functioning without upgrades. Upgrading expired permits and the discharges they allow into the Big Sioux and other South Dakota rivers and streams is being insufficiently addressed, observed Loseke. 

“Between 2012 and 2017 full time equivalent staff numbers of DENR remained the same, despite a pressing backlog of surface water discharge permits,” Loseke reported. “And despite the pressing need to review permits and provide protections for public health, and ensure protection of natural resources from pollution discharges, DENR requested no new funds for 2019.”

DENR’s staffing inadequacies are being revealed as concerns for Big Sioux River flows are increasing. Friends of the Big Sioux River indicates that the City of Sioux Falls and other rural water districts  currently rely on flows from the Big Sioux aquifer, an underground formation directly connected to the Big Sioux River.  It is expected that the aquifer will become even more important to Sioux Falls as the community’s population grows, adding emphasis to protecting the Big Sioux River from pollution discharges.