School and Public Lands Commissioner Jarrod Johnson recognizes how the federal crop insurance program (which crop insurance salesman's wife Kristi Noem wants to expand) causes farmers to plow up land that's better for other uses than crops.

Now South Dakota State University professor Carol Johnston provides data on just how much of our wetlands we've been sacrificing to cropland:

Comparing wetlands mapped 30 years ago with those areas in 2011, she documented a yearly loss of nearly 13,000 acres of wetlands. Considering only the changes in the last decade, those losses increased to 15,377 acres per year.

The 2012 data came out this spring and, Johnston said, “the rate just keeps going up” ["SDSU Scientist Documents Wetland Losses," South Dakota State University, 2013.05.24].

Johnston estimates that South Dakotanis losing 21 acres of wetlands and 73 acres of grasslands per hour. But why should you care if we're tiling and draining mushy ground and planting corn and beans instead?

“Wetlands are called the kidneys of the landscape,” Johnston said. The soil microbes in wetlands convert nitrate, a form of nitrogen dissolved in the water, into harmless nitrogen gas. Nitrates can pollute well water, making it unfit to drink. Without the filtering effects of wetlands, these nitrates can also encourage the growth of algae. When these algae decompose, they decrease the oxygen available for fish and other aquatic organisms.

Wetlands help recharge groundwater supplies in many places, Johnston explained. Because these shallow reservoirs hold excess water, they can also reduce flooding downstream. Johnston cited an instance in which wetlands along the Charles River in Massachusetts were bought and maintained specifically for the purpose of reducing floods in the city of Boston [SDSU, 2013.05.24].

Folks who want me to build a $6.4-million sewer system to reduce pollution in Lake Herman are going to have a hard time competing with the billions more Kristi Noem wants to pour into crop insurance, which will help pour more nitrates into our lakes and help the algae bloom brighter and greener and stinkier. Folks who like drinking water rather than wading through it might also want to take a look at the farm bill and ask if it is as good for our kidneys—our wetlands—as it is for expanding industrial agriculture.

p.s.: The pending farm bill links crop insurance to conservation measures, but it also reduces the acreage that can be enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program from 30 million acres to 25 million acres.

You can read Johnston's abstract and pay $40 to read her original research in Wetlands here.

Bridal Veil Falls and Spearfish Creek look mighty impressive, but the past few days' rains have wrought a little havoc here in the Northern Black Hills:

• Spearfish Creek peaked at a flow of 690 cubic feet per second yesterday around noon. Average flow: 70 cubic feet per second.
• The rain has closed the Deadwood Public Library, reducing things to do in Deadwood other than gambling by 33%. A temporary spray-on seal applied last October in anticipation of this summer's roof redo was no match for Friday's hail:

Public Works Director jR [sic] Raysor said that the membrane evidently worked up until Saturday.

“It was dry ever since we applied it in October,” Raysor said. “There were no problems until the hail storm Friday night. Then all hell broke loose and it’s coming in from everywhere. I think it’s possible that the hail penetrated the seal” [Jaci Conrad Pearson, "Deadwood Library Closed Indefinitely," Black Hills Pioneer, 2013.05.22].

• The Sanford Homestake Lab has suspended operations after an inspection discovered some underground pumps aren't keeping up with the 8.75 inches of rain seeping down into the rock around the mine. Lab director Michael Headley says the big experiments at the 4,850-foot level face no flood danger, but he's keeping people upstairs until tomorrow morning "to give our water control systems a chance to catch up."

Here's good reason for Mayor Dana Boke to declare Wednesday a "Show up an Hour Late for Work" day in Spearfish: folks should all get a break to drive out and look at Bridal Veil Falls.

Usually the wispy Spearfish Canyon cascade looks like this:

Bridal Veil Falls, Spearfish Canyon, Sunday, August 28, 2011

This evening, after five days of heavy rain and drizzle, Bridal Veil Falls looks and sounds like this:

Spearfish Creek is raging through the whole canyon. The water is spilling over the dam four miles up from town, where the creek usually seeps down into the rocky ground and does not re-emerge until the hydro plant on the south edge of the City Park. Now muddy water is churning through the usually dry creek bad all the way to Spearfish. Awesome!

Last fall, the Lake Herman Sanitary District, on which I continue to serve, approved spending about $20,000 to have Banner Associates from Brookings recalculate the cost and feasibility of building a central sewer system around Lake Herman. The last time Banner did this work for the district, in 1999, it figured the cost piping all of Lake Herman's wastewater to Madison for treatment would have been $2.0 million.

Banner's draft report (and I emphasize draft: there's no final proposal, no final data, and no official action from the district yet, and there won't be any action without plenty of public meetings and input) updates the cost for both a poop-pipe to Madison and for local holding pond systems at Lake Herman. The cost to build those systems (assume at least 10% margin of error on all figures):

• Sewer system connected to Madison: $4.5 million.
• Sewer system with one holding pond at Lake Herman: $6.4 million.
• Sewer system with two holding ponds near Lake Herman: $7.0 million.

The cost estimate gets complicated when we add in ongoing costs. Hooking into Madison incurs higher monthly sewage rates, over which the Lake Herman Sanitary District would have no control. The district may be able to get grant money from the state to cover construction costs, but it can't use grant money to pay city sewer bills. If we get grant money to build, we end up with slightly lower annual costs (paying off the construction loan plus annual operations cost) from our own pond systems than we do paying Madison to process Lake Herman's wastewater.

So suppose Lake Herman avoided Madison entanglement and went with the one-pond system. In its draft report, Banner figures that the monthly cost of debt retirement, operations, and maintenance per household (assuming 169 households) would be around $300 a month. If we can obtain 50% grant funding from the state, Lake Hermanites would pay $150 a month for their LHSD sewer bill. That's $1800 per year for 20 years as we pay off the system.

Banner has sent me a spreadsheet with some updated figures. If we impose a $5000 hookup fee for every house, we bring the monthly bill per house to $132. If we also manage to boost the percentage of the system paid for by grants to 75% (and that likely requires shaking loose federal money), we can get the monthly bill down to $69.

For perspective, here in Spearfish, I pay $60 a month for sewer, water, and garbage service combined. The monthly bills we're talking about for Lake Herman would buy only sewer service.

Again, we have taken no action on this plan and will not until we have held a public meeting to present the final draft report to all interested residents.

In the mean time, I look forward to hearing from Lake Herman residents how much they'd be willing to pay for replacing their septic tanks with central sewer service... and how willing they are to ask Pierre and Washington to bear that cost for them.

Given that the EPA finds 58.4% of rivers and streams on the Plains in poor condition, you should be at least a little concerned about water quality. For the last few years, East Dakota Water Development District has responded to that concern over the last few years with the Dakota Water Watch program. Program coordinator Jeremy Hinke says in a press release that in 2012, 50 active volunteers sampled 80 sites in 27 lakes and streams around eastern South Dakota for sediment and bacteria.

Now West Dakota Water Development District would like to join up and make this water quality monitoring program a statewide project. WDWDD is hosting an informational meeting on water monitoring on Wednesday, April 24th. The meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. and will be held in Room 112 of the University Center Rapid City campus, 4300 Cheyenne Boulevard, south from I-90 Exit 61, in Rapid City. Dakota Water Watch specialist will tell folks about the relatively simple water monitoring methods used and look for volunteers to join the program and gather data on West River bodies of water.

I volunteered for this program for a few years on Lake Herman and enjoyed my monthly excursions into the lake. The work is relatively simple: you put on your waders or hop in your boat, measure water depth, check water clarity with a Secchi disk, look around the shore for wildlife and signs of possible pollution, and grab a couple water samples in a plastic bag to take to a local lab. It's not too tough, and it provides you, your neighbors, and policymakers with practical data about local water quality.

If you're interested in seeing just how good your West River water is, come to the West Dakota meeting April 24, 7:00 p.m., at the Rapid City University Center.

Even an emperor, denied water, would swiftly turn to dust. Water is the real monarch, and we are all its slaves.

—Salman Rushdie,  The Enchantress of Florence, 2008

Texas-based Hyperion's refinery in Union County would have consumed 12 million gallons of water a day. Canadian Powertech has applied to use up to nearly that much water per day to pollute the Southern Black Hills with uranium mining.

Saving our water supply is reason enough to be glad the Hyperion refinery is dead, and reason enough to fight Powertech's hydro-threat. According to this 24/7 Wall St. article, South Dakota is one of seven states facing the most severe water shortage. Reviewing drought and agricultural statistics, the authors rank us fifth-driest:

• Pct. of state in severe drought: 86.3%
• Pct. of state in extreme drought: 67.5% (2nd highest)
• Pct. of state in exceptional drought: 20.1% (4th highest)

More than two-thirds of South Dakota suffers from extreme drought, the second highest portion of any state. Additionally, South Dakota is one of just four states where more than 20% of its area faces exceptional drought. As with many other states, much of South Dakota’s winter wheat crop was hurt by the lack of precipitation. According to the USDA, at the end of February, 66% of winter wheat crop was considered to be in poor or very poor condition, up from 31% in February 2012 ["The Seven States Running out of Water," 24/7 Wall St., 2013.03.21].

The state with the most critical water situation: Nebraska... where people like Kristi Noem, John Thune, and Tim Johnson think it would be a great idea to run the Keystone XL pipeline in proximity to the Ogallala Aquifer. Also mighty dry: Oklahoma, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Kansas.

You can hope that spring and summer will bring us rain to wash away my eco-hippie alarmism, but Bernie Hunhoff notes that last summer was the hottest and driest on record and that one South Dakota expert sees us in for another dry spell this summer:

Darren Clabo, the state fire meteorologist, told firefighters and emergency personnel in Yankton that the drought remains widespread and shows little sign of abating. "We could definitely see continued drought across the region," he said [Bernie Hunhoff, "Prepare for Hot and Dry in South Dakota," South Dakota Magazine, 2013.03.27].

Whether you are raising corn or cattle or fighting fires, water is precious. Especially in South Dakota, we need to take a broad, long-term approach to water conservation and use. We should take a hard look at industrial ventures like Powertech and Keystone XL that would provide temporary and meager economic benefits at the cost of long-term depletion and pollution of our water.

In West River mining news, Black Hills residents concerned about clean water won a victory this month. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources originally planned to review Powertech's applications to waste billions of gallons of water on its proposed in situ uranium mine in Fall River County last week. The DENR received numerous citizen requests to delay the hearings and allow more time to research this ill-conceived plan. (DENR posts 34 e-mails requesting this delay; this document also lists about 300 parties filing as intervenors, though some may be Powertech proponents.) DENR acceded to these requests, postponing its Powertech hearing until October.

Activism works... if not to outright stop dangerous mining plans, then at least to buy time to raise awareness, mobilize more citizens to fight to keep the Black Hills clean... or for Powertech to finally run out of dupes—er, investors—to shore up its shaky finances and relieve us of their threat.

Our friend Senator Al Franken of Minnesota is cheering for the same federal funding his South Dakota counterpart John Thune loves, the dollars for the Lewis and Clark water project.

But Senator Thune is getting a little torqued at our red-state mooching:

“This is ridiculous. In South Dakota, you've been getting water from this project, but none in Minnesota and almost none in Iowa. In fact, all these communities, Worthington, all these communities in southwestern Minnesota have paid their full share,” Franken said ["Sen. Franken Hopes Federal Money Will Help Water System," KELOLand.com, 2013.03.21].

Senator Franken and his Minnesota constituents know full well they are subsidizing South Dakota's faux-skinflint fiscal policy. We'd better hope they don't get wise and cut off our fix.