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.
Pull a trump and hire the most incompetent person wearing engineer boots and make sure they’re white scumacyst, phony kristian incel mama’s boys stilll living in her basement. What could go wrong?
I know Mike from IA!
I know Eric, and his past two predecessors. There was lots of ethical talent there, subject to some occasional politicization (e.g. Homestake, Janklow ETSI).
SD Dept. Ed. head pay is the highest, likely negotiated ($186,287). There maybe other state positions that pay more. Other states surely pay WAY more. This state is too dry to support much water development (west), too wet for purity (east), shrimp may be mushy, groundwater is deep, and no one is smart enough to capitalize on the often frozen, mighty, muddy MO except the Tribes (Mni Wiconi). The dams, taken from the Indians, quietly fill w/silt, or flood stupid Republican governors. Further hydro is marginal.
A saavy, progressive chief could create a saavy progressive direction, unless a lazy hunter or retired military who puts smelly feet up all winter in small town Peyton Place is hired, content with morning breakfast at the local diners, evenings at the water holes, and the occasional travel conference in the now flooding tropical islands. Global warming is the biggest monster on the horizon and the state AG (Jackley) better know it! Such a genius Chief, networked with other ethical state water engineers nation wide, and globally, together with formidable legal support could change SD. For MUCH the better.
Troy Heinert is the kind of champion personality style we should be so lucky to attract, in a non-partisan Chief Engineer, P.E., Phd. candidate.
Main stem tourism is quiet. No Harleys. SD is still a simple state, which is not a bad thing. Somehow pry state government and the DC legislative leadership away from the always corrupt, getting more corrupt GOP, and it could mature to serve its gentle residents in cultural harmony, and civilization, even.
Black Elk peak exposed the conservative racists. So we know they are the gleaming tip of the iceberg, betraying the root of the political dilemma of registered voters in the state:
Republicans 305,166 (Young Republicans—what an anathema—Noem was cultivated young, and dumb, and look what she is doing now!)
Democrats 143,994
Independents 88,319
No-party affiliation 62,216
Ah, well….