South Dakota Searchlight-By Seth Tupper
Though he didn’t credit the Biden administration by name, South Dakota’s top environmental official recently praised one of the administration’s laws for spurring a “water renaissance that was overdue” in the state.
Hunter Roberts leads South Dakota’s Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Its responsibilities include the regulation of drinking water and wastewater systems.
The office awarded $689 million to 200 water-related projects across the state during the last several years, Roberts told a legislative committee last week at the Capitol in Pierre. The money came from the American Rescue Plan Act, known by the acronym “ARPA.”
“It created an opportunity to make that investment and, I think, move our state forward long-term when we look at water-wastewater infrastructure, which is critical,” Roberts said. “If we don’t have safe, clean drinking water, what else do we have?”
Congress passed the ARPA legislation in 2021. Then-President Joe Biden signed it into law that March. It included a total of $1.9 trillion in funding to stimulate the national economy during the COVID-19 pandemic.
– Hunter Roberts, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources
South Dakota’s share was about $1 billion. Besides water and wastewater infrastructure, the money funded broadband internet expansion, infrastructure for housing, telemedicine initiatives, the construction of a new state public health lab, and more.
Roberts’ department used the water and wastewater money to make grants for local projects. The grants helped to pay for infrastructure such as storage reservoirs, tanks, water pipes, treatment plants, wells, pump stations, filtration systems and sewer lines.
Some local water systems had been diligent about upgrading and modernizing before the ARPA funds became available, Roberts said, but for the others, “those additional funds kind of spurred our utilities to get off their keister and make those investments that they maybe hadn’t made in 20 to 30 years.”
At another point in his presentation to the legislative committee — which included a broad overview of departmental activities — Roberts said he was excited about the end of the Biden administration. Roberts was appointed to his job in 2019 by then-Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican who’s since become President Donald Trump’s secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Roberts said the Biden administration enacted “overly broad, overreaching, unfounded” laws and regulations.
“It seemed like there was a lot of regulatory overreach coming from Washington, D.C., pushed down to the regions and the states that we didn’t like,” Roberts said.
He also acknowledged that Trump’s zeal for imposing tariffs could negatively impact international trade and industries that depend on it, including agriculture.
“That remains to be seen how that all works through the system, but it’s certainly something we’re watching closely,” Roberts said.