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 [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.