A January 2025 view of the South Dakota State Capitol in Pierre. (Photo by Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
PIERRE, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) — A plan to replace the dam and spillway at a northeast South Dakota lake will receive $8.2 million in additional state funding, lawmakers decided Monday, raising the total funds available for the project to more than $34 million.
The state House voted 61-3 and the Senate voted 28-2 to support the spending. Because lawmakers didn’t finish work on the bill earlier this month, they dealt with it Monday on Veto Day, which is the final legislative day reserved for considering the governor’s vetoes.
The deteriorating, nearly 90-year-old Richmond Lake Dam is state-owned and the state’s responsibility to fix, said Sen. Mark Lapka, R-Leola. The lake, which is part of a state recreation area, is on a creek several miles upstream from the city of Aberdeen.
“If a catastrophic failure would occur, there is, in fact, people’s lives in danger, and it’s one of those what-ifs that you have to take seriously and address,” Lapka said. “What we have the opportunity here today to do is to leave it better than when we got it.”
The location of Richmond Lake in northeast South Dakota.
This year’s bill will transfer $8.2 million from the state’s unclaimed property trust fund to the Office of School and Public Lands for the project. Unclaimed property consists of an array of abandoned or forgotten private assets, including money from bank accounts, PayPal accounts, stocks and even the contents of safe deposit boxes. Holders of the money or items, such as banks, try to find the owners. The property reverts to the state after three years.
Office of School and Public Lands Commissioner Brock Greenfield said the state has a legal requirement to repair the dam.
“I hate that I have to be back here asking for funds, but this is a state responsibility,” Greenfield told a panel of six lawmakers Monday morning.
Some lawmakers were concerned with the office returning again for more funding after several prior approvals, but said the risk of damage to life and property outweighed concerns about the cost.
Republican Rep. Al Novstrup, who lives just south of the dam in Aberdeen, said if the structure breaks, the damage could be seven times that of the 1972 Black Hills flood, which caused an estimated $165 million worth of damage and also killed 238 people, primarily in Rapid City.
“We know this dam is a high-hazard dam,” he said. “And we’re going to worry about $8 million? This makes no sense at all.”
The governor signed the spending bill immediately Monday, so the Office of School and Public Lands now has a total of $34.9 million available for the project, including money from past spending bills. Greenfield told lawmakers that’s “probably a reliable number,” based on a bid from Journey Group, a Sioux Falls construction company.
Lawmakers have appropriated state money for the project several times since 2022, but Greenfield said his office received less federal funding than anticipated.
“There we were back last year and we thought we had enough to get us by and we learned this year that we didn’t,” he said. “But I’m hopeful that with the appropriation that has now been passed, that we can get the project done, get the project done right.”
The multi-phase project will take until 2028 to complete, according to Greenfield.
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