After years of thoughtful planning and collaboration between Minnehaha Community Water Corporation and Big Sioux Rural Water, a groundbreaking was held this past week on the new Shared Resources Water Treatment Plant west of Trent.
Project officials met in what is currently a field just two miles west of town to put the first shovels into the ground. The new plant, and its location, is necessary, according to local water experts, to provide the quickly growing and otherwise heavy agricultural-based region with enough water now and into the future.
“We need the water now, really,” said Big Sioux Community Water Systems General Manager Jodi Johanson.
“We could be pumping right now with the growth coming out of Sioux Falls and across the area, it’s very much needed. And it’s not just us, it’s all rural water systems across the state.”

Between increased demand and drought in recent years, new water sources have been sought.
Currently, with limited capacity, neither system is able to add all of the requested new service connections and demand projections show water demands in both systems will exceed treatment capacity by 2025 if no improvements are made.
The joint venture project will access what water experts say is one of the few places left in the Big Sioux aquifer able to still provide a good amount of water to the region. It will be overseen by a Board of Directors with three coming from Big Sioux Community Water and four from Minnehaha Community Water Systems.
Construction will begin in earnest by the end of this month and early June, but it will be years before the project is complete and service lines are pumping water to where it needs to go. The project is expected to be complete in the fall of 2026. The general contractor is Rice Lake West out of Minnesota.
The plant ultimately will include an 8.0 MGD (Million Gallons per Day) groundwater treatment plant, a well field, one ground storage reservoir, one elevated storage reservoir, one booster pump station, and 14.8 miles of treated water pipeline.
More information on the project can be found on BSCWS’s website at bigsiouxcws.com.