The state is having trouble recruiting a replacement for its recently retired water rights chief engineer:
South Dakota state government has now gone four months without a state water-rights chief engineer.
Eric Gronlund retired from the post in June, after 41 years with the state Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The director of the state Office of Water, Mark Mayer, is serving in that role on an acting basis. Mayer told the state Water Management Board last week that no applications had been received yet for the vacancy.
Board member Kelly Hepler, who’s a former head for the state Department of Game, Fish and Parks, asked Mayer whether pay was a reason. Gronlund’s last annual salary was listed at $122,050.56.
“Well, pay is probably part of it,” Mayer replied. He said that the chief engineer needs to be a licensed professional engineer, and engineering firms and other businesses are competing for the talent. “There’s a short supply of those,” Mayer said [Bob Mercer, “At the Capitol: Searching for a New Chief Water Engineer,” KELO-TV, 2025.10.06].
I invite the engineers in the audience to enlighten us as to going wages for such highly skilled professionals. But Glassdoor reports the median pay for licensed professional engineers is $121K, with salaries ranging from $93K to $161K.
A cynical observer might suspect that living in Pierre is why Democrats hesitate to run in the gubernatorial primary so qualified engineers ignore the water job for the same reason.