SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The proposed new men’s prison in Lincoln County may not need to link into the Harrisburg wastewater treatment system in order to be built.
State officials have said that a wastewater lagoon system could be built for the prison.
The new prison would be in Dayton Township, roughly five miles south of Harrisburg and eight miles northwest of Canton. It would house up to 1,500 inmates. That’s larger than the estimated population of Parker at 1,200 residents or Crooks at 1,371.
The Harrisburg City Council will discuss a proposal Tuesday night from the Department of Corrections for the state to use the city’s wastewater treatment system for the planned new prison. The DOC has offered $7.2 million which city officials have said will reduce the city’s loan and related utility bills for residents.
The DOC has four options for wastewater, according to a discussion at the Legislature’s Feb. 24 Joint Committee on Appropriations meeting.
A South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources official Brian Walsh told KELOLAND News for an October 2023 story that “The use of lagoons to treat wastewater is allowed in South Dakota if the system is designed and operated in accordance with state requirements.”
Lagoons are an option but DOC Secretary Kelli Wasko said in the February meeting “We’d prefer not to build several lagoons.” There is adjacent land available for wastewater lagoons, she said.
A wastewater lagoon treatment system takes wastewater and treats it within the lagoons. Generally, treated sludge goes to the bottom where it can be cleaned out for environmentally safe use. A lagoon treatment system will vary in terms of oxygen levels and biochemical processes in treatment.
The city of Harrisburg used a three-cell facultative lagoon treatment before October of 2021, according to the city’s website. Treated lagoon water was pumped to the wastewater treatment plant several miles away in Sioux Falls. The city’s new water reclamation facility started discharging treated wastewater to the Big Sioux River on Oct. 7, 2021.
Harrisburg currently averages 400,000 gallons per day of wastewater flow. The new facility was designed for an average of one million gallons a day of flow and up to a peak of three million gallons a day. It can be expanded to handle up to four million gallons a day.
The DOC also has contracts in progress for water, electricity and natural gas, according to a July 30 DOC presentation to the Legislature’s Interim Joint Appropriations Committee.
The South Lincoln Rural Water System would provide water. Southeastern Electric Cooperative and East River Electric Power Cooperative would provide electricity. MidAmerican Energy would provide natural gas.
An RFI for the proposed prison said it would use an estimated 150,000 gallons of water per day. The estimated annual electrical usage would be 12.47 KV.
