Western Dakota Regional Water System exec and former legislator Kristin Conzet was in Washington last week asking Congress to send South Dakota more federal money, this time to study the feasibility of piping water from the Missouri River out to the Black Hills. Knowing how to sell big government spending to Trumpublicans, Conzet said yeah, sure, people and cows are thirsty, but so are bombers:
Conzet said the project area, including Rapid City, is “one of the only major regions in the state without a reliable, long-term water supply to meet community, rural, agricultural, economical, tribal, and national defense needs.”
The water system has received $12 million from the state and has completed five years of foundational work, including demand projections, intake evaluations and regional system planning. The project is expected to cost billions of dollars.
Conzet also tied the proposal to Ellsworth Air Force Base and the impending arrival of B-21 bomber planes, which are under development. She told lawmakers that “reliable water is essential to mission readiness and sustained operations” [Joshua Haiar, “South Dakotan Tells Congress of ‘Growing Water Security Risk’ If Pipeline Project Is Delayed,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.04.16].
The Western Dakota Regional Water System got on its feet in 2021 thanks to $8 million from President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act. The bill on which Conzet testified last week, Congressman Dusty Johnson’s H.R. 7288, would spend up to $10 million to pay for up to half the cost of a water-pipeline feasibility study through the Department of the Interior. A United States Geological Survey study published last year found that, as of 2022, the six aquifers in the Black Hills had more groundwater coming in than flowing out (see pp. 55–56), though that could change with population growth and long drought.
The water that flows out of the Black Hills aquifers eventually ends up in the Missouri River, so one could argue that the 72-inch-diameter pipeline Western Dakota wants to build would just be carrying water back to where it comes from… but using that water to support expansion of the military-industrial complex seems like the least good reason to put this 161-mile kink in the hydrological cycle.
Deadwood oldtimers used to say that when the Ellsworth wells were drilled many wells in southern Lawrence County went dry. Today, Ellsworth is home to a Superfund site so are Malmstrom AFB, Montana; Minot AFB, North Dakota and FE Warren AFB, Wyoming.
And people that live right by the Missouri River can’t get more water from it due to too small of lines put in years ago.
Is Washington capable of innovating anything other than warring tools?