Photo from MNC.
YANKTON, S.D. (WNAX) — The hot and dry summer has focused the need for a more reliable water source for many of the towns and cities in southeast South Dakota, including Sioux Falls.
The Lewis & Clark Regional Water System provides water to many of those towns. Executive Director Troy Larson said the year has been “touch-and-go” at times. At one point in June the system was just 200,000 gallons short of its 32.2 million-gallon capacity.
“We’ve been running all of our wells 24/7, so we’ve been pushing the system as hard as we can,” Larson said.
Larson says the system is building a large new collector well slated to come online by May or June of 2022.
“We’ve just got to get through this year,” Larson said. “Hopefully in two or three weeks things will start getting cooler and wetter, and we will have avoided the worst of it.”
Larson says they are hoping that infrastructure funding at the state and federal level can help fill the final one hundred thirty million dollars needed to finish the project.
Wells near the Missouri River south of Vermillion supply the system that delivers water to towns and cities in South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota.
(Jerry Oster, WNAX, contributed this report.)
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