Dakotafire Get your spark here.

The second in a series of events intended to spark community and regional conversations will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday, May 29, at the American Legion in Webster, S.D. The event, called a Dakotafire Café, intends to get people talking about the topics presented in the latest issue of Dakotafire magazine, according to Dakotafire Editor Heidi Marttila-Losure. The May-June issue takes an in-depth look at the increase in installation of drain tile in the eastern Dakotas. Read More »

The 19th-century explorer John Wesley Powell envisioned developing the political boundaries of the arid American West based on watersheds. More than 120 years ago, he predicted the potential for fights over water. Powell’s watershed boundary vision did not come to pass, but the conflicts he envisioned did—including here in the Dakotas. Read More »

A Regional Watershed Advisory Task Force, a legislative committee charged with studying water management issues, held its third meeting in Webster last week where the message from landowners was relief from the ever rising sloughs and lakes. Read More »

Groundwater depletion of the Ogalla aquifer has made headlines in recent years, but the Dakota aquifer has also gone down significantly since 1900, according to estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey. Read More »

A handful of area farmers convinced the Day County Commission that requiring notices before drain tiling is a step in the wrong direction. Read More »

We may be in a drought now, but the damage from two years of flooding lives on. Read More »

The size of a water or wastewater project can sometimes dwarf the entire budget for the town. There are a variety of sources out there for funding for rural water and wastewater projects, but the rewards to go to the swift, the persistent, and those tolerant of paperwork. Here’s an overview.   FEDERAL HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT Community Development Block ... Read More »

Hecla has a water mystery on its hands, and it’s getting costly. “If you look at what we’re billing and what we’re pumping, we are losing about half our water somewhere,” said Hecla Finance Officer Gayle Lloyd. Read More »