MADISON — After nearly 35 years of waiting, Madison is the last city in South Dakota to be connected to the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System. Local politicians, South Dakota’s three congressmen and business leaders gathered Wednesday to celebrate the city’s connection.

Madison’s approximately 6,000 residents logged into the system earlier this month.

The pipeline that delivers the water is 310 miles long and stretches through southeastern South Dakota, southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. The approximately $700 million water system serves about 350,000 people.

The connection will mean better water quality in the city and better economic development because it will increase water capacity, especially for agriculture around Madison, said Republican Senator Casey Crabtree of Madison.

“It simply means a higher growth capacity that would not otherwise exist,” Crabtree said.

Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota told attendees at Thursday’s ceremony that “water development is economic development.” He compared the Lewis and Clark system to expanding electricity and broadband in rural parts of the country.

“We continue to ensure that young people want to return to the rural areas of our country and stay there – not only in the communities themselves, but in the agricultural areas,” Rounds said. “That would not be possible if we did not have this type of development in several states.”

The city will mix its existing water sources with tap water to ensure supplies during droughts and other disasters.

Sibley, Iowa, will be the last to be connected to the pipeline. Lewis and Clark CEO Troy Larson expects Sibley to be connected in the fall.

The final step in building the “base” water system will be to build a water treatment plant in Vermillion to achieve a water capacity of 44.19 million gallons per day, Larson said.

Most of the pipeline is funded by the federal government. It was supposed to be completed in 2016 but fell behind schedule due to a lack of funding, Larson said.

The pipeline is now scheduled for completion in 2028 after receiving a $152.5 million grant through the bipartisan Infrastructure Act of 2021. Bureau of Reclamation Deputy Commissioner Roque Sánchez represented the Biden administration at the ceremony and praised the federal government’s role in supporting the project and other rural investments across the country.

None of South Dakota’s U.S. congressional delegates voted for the bill.

“It took a long time to get to where we are today because of federal funding,” Larson said, “but in recent years we have been sprinting to the finish line.”

Larson said Lewis and Clark began construction on the first water system expansion in 2022, which is expected to be completed in 2030 and increase water capacity to 60 million gallons per day. The nonprofit expects the second expansion to begin shortly afterward to more than double the system’s capacity in light of population growth.

The regional system has “paved the way” for similar water systems across the state and the country, Larson said. New approaches in western, northern and eastern South Dakota are vying for Missouri River water for their communities.

That’s to be expected as cities and rural water systems across the state maximize their groundwater sources and realize other states want to tap the Missouri River, Larson said. South Dakota residents want to be there first.

“The only truly untapped, reliable source of water in the state is the Missouri River,” Larson said. “We all realize that we need to take full advantage of this resource that we have.”

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