Brant Lake Sewer Project Threatens Family Farm

Last updated on 2012.12.15

Linda Krsnak is a fourth-generation Lake County farmer. She and her husband Jimmy run Linda's Garden, an honest-to-goodness family farm, not an ethanol factory, producing real food that people right here in South Dakota eat. The Krsnaks raise 300 varieties of vegetables, herbs, fruits, berries, and flowers. They sell that produce at farmers markets and supply restaurants and Sanford Hospital. They donate healthy food to area charities. They do educational outreach with tours of their farm and workshops on their sustainable farming practices. If city folk dropped by Lake County asking to see a specimen of the ideal farm, you wouldn't take them to Rick Millner's latest stinking feedlot; you'd take them to Linda's Gardens.

But if the Brant Lake Sanitary District has its way, the Krsnaks may find their farm smelling like Millner's outfit:

Linda says the Brant Lake Sanitary District plans to put another sewage pond about a football field's length from their property. She and Jimmy have major concerns about the food they grow -- and about the water table.

"Those sewage ponds are in the middle of the skunk creek aquifer," says Linda.

Linda tells KSFY that under DENR safety criteria, the new pond would be too close to their property, and it would be too deep into the water table.

Dave Templeton with the DENR says the pond can and will be built safely.

"Our design criteria are recommended design criteria, not required," says Templeton, "We have no evidence of an aquifer under that site or that would be impacted by his facility."

Jerry Lammers, an attorney for the Brant Lake Sanitary District, says the proposed sanitary pond has met with approval locally and nationally, from the Lake County Commission to the EPA.

"By all accounts, it should improve the situation there considerably," says Lammers.

Lammers says the new pond will have the latest technology to help with containment, but the Krsnaks say they still don't believe it will be safe. Based on a recent assessment they say the current sewage ponds have already lowered their property value by 30%. The couple says they could lose twice that amount- and even their business- with the new pond.

"I'm too old to start over. Everything we have, we put into this place," says Jimmy.

"It is terrifying. You can't even describe how it feels to be threatened in such a way that we have absolutely no control over," says Linda [Denise DePaolo, "Chester Grower's Livelihood Threatened by Sewage Pond," KSFY, 2012.02.17].

Remember: if you develop housing subdivisions right, there's no need for a central sewer system. Keep houses spread out, build only on land that can properly absorb and break down sewage, and onsite septic tanks can safely dispose of the wastewater that landowners generate.

But when developers want to turn the country into a town, when city folks want to pack houses cheek by jowl like on Phillips Avenue or on Lake Madison, when landowners want to flush their poop away without having to take any responsibility other than paying their sewer bill on time, you end up with a big central sewer system and sewage ponds that make your poop someone else's problem.

The Krsnaks are working hard to document this threat to their livelihood on the Linda's Gardens blog. Krsnak says the Brant Lake sewage pond would back up drainage, raise their water table, and potentially flood their fields and root cellar. The sewage ponds could contaminate that rising water table and endanger their crops. They also find themselves already enjoying the stink of Chester poop in the nearby ponds from February on through the growing season; the closer Brant Lake pond could make their farm unlivable.

The Krsnaks report getting no support from the state at all. Funny, considering how eagerly Pierre declares its support for agriculture. If the Krsnaks were a giant dairy, Governor Daugaard would be on the scene protecting their livelihood. But since they are just a little vegetable farm, their fate apparently does not matter in Pierre.