Last updated on 2025-12-01
Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr (R-11/Sioux Falls) said during Wednesday’s Executive Board meeting that South Dakota may need to get tough with agricultural polluters:
“I think it takes more than the carrot to address this,” said state Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls.
Karr said he doubts the problem will be appropriately addressed “until we get serious about some different types of regulations.”
“And that’s pretty scary for folks, especially for those that are in the community that starts with the letter ‘A’ and ends with ‘G,’” Karr said. “We can sit here and talk about it, and dance around it all day. I think you can have some incentives, but we’re going to have to look at some restrictions as well, and regulate” [Joshua Haiar, “With So Much Polluted Water, SD Lawmaker Says State Can No Longer ‘Dance Around’ Ag Regulations,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2025.11.19].
Senator Karr was responding to a Legislative Research Council issue memorandum on “South Dakota’s Surface Waters” presented by LRC research analyst Lance Nixon. The issue memorandum notes that more than three quarters of South Dakota’s stream miles suffer from pollution, primarily soil erosion and shit, that substantially affects their usability:
- 1,349 stream miles, or 21.9 percent of the miles evaluated, fully support their assigned beneficial uses;
- 4,799 stream miles, or 78.1 percent of the miles evaluated, do not support one or more of their beneficial uses;
- Total suspended solids contamination from nonpoint sources and natural origin was the primary reason some streams did not support their assigned beneficial uses for fish or aquatic life;
- E. coli contamination from livestock and wildlife was the primary reason some streams did not support recreational uses; and
- Eighty-nine streams or stream segments are listed as impaired and in need of TMDL development, or plans to manage the total maximum daily load of specific pollutants; and
- One hundred percent of stream miles that were assessed for alkalinity, ammonia, arsenic, cadmium, chloride, chromium, copper, cyanide, lead, mercury, nickel, nitrate, radium, silver, uranium, sulfate, and zinc met water quality standards [emphasis mine; Lance Nixon, Issue Memorandum: “South Dakota’s Surface Waters,” Legislative Research Council, presented to Executive Board 2025.11.19].
The issue memo mentions the state’s Riparian Buffer Initiative as one of the state’s programs to combat erosion and E. coli. Senator Karr’s 2021 House Bill 1256 pumped $3 million into paying ag producers to plant more grass along streams in the Big Sioux River watershed. That funding recruited 67 buffer projects as well as a couple poop-management systems at a couple of small (less than 400 head) CAFOs, The Department of Agriculture (and Natural Resources) reported this month that HB 1256’s incentives reduced nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment, and, at the CAFOs, bacteria in adjoining surface waters.
Senator Karr is pointing out that along with paying a few willing members of the ag-industrial complex not to pollute, we may need to develop tougher regulations to get the majority of producers to pour less dirt and shit into our water.
The ag-industrial complex responded with swift outrage, led by Governor Larry Rhoden, who promised to take Senator Karr to the woodshed:
“Rest assured,” Rhoden told town hall attendees, “he’s going to be set straight on a few of his issues in a very kind, civil way. But I will have conversations” [Makenzie Huber, “Governor Says Lawmaker Will Be ‘Set Straight’ on Suggestion to Regulate Agricultural Water Polluters,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2025.11.20].
Governor Rhoden also took the Trump line, branding Senator Karr as a dumb liar:
Rhoden, a rancher, said during his Thursday town hall at the Canopy by Hilton hotel in Sioux Falls that Karr’s comments were “misinformation,” saying they were “made out of ignorance.” He added that “nobody on the planet has a bigger, more vested interest in protecting our environment and natural resources” than farmers and ranchers [Huber, 2025.11.20].
Misinformation? Senator Karr wasn’t spreading malicious lies. He was responding to evidence presented by the state’s own agencies. Governor Rhoden is the misinformer here, spreading the ag industry’s manure about farmers and ranchers being the biggest environmentalists. If they really have such a keen interest in “protecting our environment and natural resources,” then why do we have to pay them to act in their own interest, and why do so many of them keep dumping their waste into our water?
Senator Karr, to his credit, hasn’t immediately bowed to the pulpit bully:
In an interview later Thursday with South Dakota Searchlight, Karr said Rhoden reached out to him to talk about the comments. Karr said he hopes the discussion and the controversy around his comments will lead to a larger conversation surrounding South Dakota’s surface water quality.
He added that he “didn’t mean to pick on ag in particular,” but that the state will “have to look at restrictions and runoff” in rural and urban settings to improve surface water quality. The agricultural community has already risen up in defense, Karr said, as he predicted in his Wednesday comments.
“There’s been a pretty strong reaction,” Karr said, “but I’m hoping it’ll bring folks to the table to say that 75% failure in our rivers and streams is something we can’t live with” [Huber, 2025.11.20].
Keep at it, Senator Karr. Bring some bills in January on reducing pollution from CAFOs, requiring riparian buffers, and reducing soil erosion. Call out the ag-industrial lobby and make them defend their practices and explain why they shouldn’t have to do more to clean up their own waste.
It’s no secret South Dakota is a chemical toilet; but the reasoning is hardly mysterious: it’s all about the money hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule. In Iowa voluntary buffer strips and other conservation practices have simply failed desertifying parts of the state and causing the Raccoon River to be named one of the most endangered waterways in the US.
In 2015 concern over the further contamination of shallow aquifers that supply water to a third of East River caused the Clay County Planning and Zoning Board to table for the second time in as many weeks changing ordinances governing concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs. In 2018 South Dakota State University President Barry Dunn told WNAX radio that state residents should just accept the fact that the Big Sioux River is a sh!t hole.
But now an Earth hating South Dakota legislator from Madison wants to allow eminent domain and trespass for some pipeline operators but also wants to protect CAFOs from scrutiny. Casey Crabtree admits that the cases of criminal trespass at CAFOs don’t even exist but ignores the fact that those operations are in fact agro-terrorists themselves.
But lobbyist and ecoterrorist American Farm Bureau Federation is pushing a bill that would bar what used to be South Dakota’s environmental watchdog from even releasing the locations of CAFOs in the red moocher state to anyone unless required by federal law. CAFOs in the chemical toilet routinely violate state regulations and flagrantly flout federal pollution standards.
The Messrs. Karr and Odencach are noted Sierra Club members and Lorax lovers. Not the sort of fellows in sync with Black Hills people, more in line with the big city and liberal mind set of, as my close personal friend Lar calls it, Spearditch.
As Grudz notes, Black Hills people love swimming in sheit.
Wyoming dumps tons of mercury and other heavy metal oxides every year on South Dakota from coal burning power plants and researchers at the South Dakota School of Mines know most of the toxins in the state’s lakes have precipitated from emissions released by plants in North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. And, if South Dakota had a Democratic attorney general she’d sue those states for the poisoned legacy created by Colstrip, Basin Electric and Black Hills Energy. One of the most polluted reaches of the Belle Fourche River goes right through current Republican Attorney General Marty Jackley’s boyhood ranch.
So pick your poison, Republicans.
A study published on 12 August in the journal Nature mapped more than 15,000 CAFOs and found that fine particulate matter is nearly 30% higher near cattle farms and nearly 11% higher near hog farms. Feedlot hotspots in Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota have high percentages of Latino workers who have no health insurance. Exposure to dust and manure stored in lagoons is linked to serious health conditions, including asthma, bronchitis, cardiovascular disease, and leukemia.
What is it about the egocentric point-of-view of industry and agriculture that warrants their polluting as something of no responsibility to them? Why do they work under that assumption that making the air, water, and land dirty is OK because they enjoy profit? Why doesn’t the US work under the posit that industry and agriculture have the responsibility to do no harm — or cleaning up after themselves to the level before their intrusions?
It all seems like corporate welfare to use my tax dollars to clean their messes.
Where does Governor Rhoden get his information? These facts aren’t new, and they aren’t particularly surprising. All he has to do is read the information coming from his own scientists over decades. What’s depressing is that it’s getting worse. There is a lack of desire to address these issue. I’ve seen people like Rhoden stick their head in the polluted sand for fifty years. That’s been a big part of of the problem.
O, yes, it seems to me that any other industry that tried to get by with so much irresponsible dumping of waste on everybody else would get run out of town. Rhoden and the Farm Bureau’s sanctimonious “farmers are real environmentalists” bullshit is as noxious as the actual bullshit they dump into our water.
Good question, Donald. That’s one aspect of this story that sticks out to me: Karr was simply responding to an assessment from the LRC, not the Sierra Club or Dakota Free Press or any other green/liberal outfit. He’s responding to the obvious fact that, however much farmers and ranchers are doing to police their own waste, we’re still ending up with 78% of our streams impaired by pollution that comes primarily from agriculture. For Rhoden to call the LRC’s report “misinformation” requires further explanation from the Governor, and preferably not an explanation handed to him by the Farm Bureau.
I’m also curious what prompted Senator Karr to develop this backbone and touch one of the third rails of SD politics. He’s a Republican calling for tougher regulation of agriculture. He knew he’d get backlash, but he still took his shot. I’m very curious to know political forces in District 11 and the Sioux Falls metro may be motivating him and how far he’ll go in introducing and pushing legislation this Session.
Hmmm… has water quality popped up as an issue in District 11? Karr won in 2024 by 18 points; is he worried Aaron Matson will eat into that big margin by pushing to clean up Skunk Creek, which carries water from three counties through the northern part of District 11 and under I-29 into the Big Sioux at the Minnehaha Country Club? (Sorry, I started looking at maps! :-) )
Your Governor attended the Leopold conservation award given to the Stomprud ranch in his home county. What he said there was total bs too. He pretends an awful lot doesn’t he?
To disregard environmental findings of our Health & Science Departments is both small minded and dangerous.
The County, worked to clean up Wall Lake.
A Sanitary District now keeps raw sewage out
of the lake.
We used to prevent certain businesses from operating close to wells. We now have Aquifer ( ground water) protection.
Brandon was a smelly place to live until Sioux
Falls Sewage &Waste Water was Treated.
Every one wants to be the polluter But not
down stream or down wind of a Polluter.
It is Governments OBLIGATION to keep
our Water Clean, Soil Fertile & Air Pure for ALL of us, the U.S.