Water is pork: Lewis and Clark water system a symbol of failure

We all know South Dakota is a perpetual welfare state and permanent disaster area.

The death of the Missouri River ecosystem in South Dakota began with the European invasion, was accelerated by industrial agriculture and sealed with the construction of the main stem dams.

Not many South Dakotans have prospered as professional fishermen, but there was a time when you could make a living by clamming on the James, Big Sioux and Vermillion rivers. The clam industry dwindled in the 1940s due to over-harvesting, environmental changes in the rivers and, of course, the invention of plastic buttons. Huge fish were also reported by dam-builders when the reservoirs were built along the Missouri. Some divers saw fish 15 feet long floating at the bottom of the muddy river.

Read Katie Hunhoff's remembrance here.

This morning the Big Sioux River is out of its banks contaminating everything in its path with poisonous effluent.

"That is where Lewis and Clark's pipeline ends," said Scott Hain, Worthington Public Utilities general manager. "And once the water flows through that meter it belongs to Worthington and we can do with it whatever we wish." The project draws water from near the Missouri River in South Dakota, and pipes it to more than 300,000 customers in South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. Once Lewis and Clark is completed to Worthington next fall, it'll provide the city of 13,000 with some much-needed water security. The federal government 18 years ago agreed to pay 80 percent of the project's cost.

Read the rest here.

In the above sketch the water pipeline runs nearly parallel to the Big Sioux River but in the opposite direction. South Dakota's socialized dairies are wreaking habitat havoc all along the state's border with Minnesota.

This isn't self-reliance; it's moral hazard. Instead of empowering communities to harvest snow melt and rain water rural communities continue to be dependent on politicians who exploit need.

Like most of East River South Dakota southwestern Minnesota is a Republican stronghold where dairies, swine units and other concentrated animal feeding operations have devastated water supplies by contaminating wells with nitrates. The United States Geological Survey has found elevated levels of arsenic in ground water near hog confinements.

Like much of the Midwest Minnesota is facing elevated wildfire danger because it's cheaper to give bailouts to welfare farmers than it is to equip volunteer fire departments to conduct fuel treatments.

Expect South Dakota's climate denier governor to request yet another disaster declaration while ignoring the effects of ecocide in the chemical toilet.