Bureaucratic headwinds threaten construction of pipeline to bring safe drinking water to Nebraska reservation

If you turn on a faucet on the Santee Sioux reservation, the water that comes out looks normal enough.

But there’s a good chance the sink it’s pouring into is discolored or corroded. If you let it sit out for a while, you’ll see a significant amount of floaters. Inside Santee’s water tank on a hill above the village, the water looks like a black slough.

“The inside of that is probably the most graphic video you'll ever see of a water system,” said Clint Powell, an engineer with Pinpoint Corporation who has worked on water issues with the tribe for nearly 20 years. “It'll make you want to vomit a little bit.”

Drink the water, and you’re putting yourself at risk of negatively impacting your memory, attention or motor skills, particularly if you’re very young or very old.

That’s because the water in Santee has a dangerously high level of manganese, a naturally occurring mineral that can’t be boiled away.

The tribe has issued a drinking water advisory to the reservation recommending tap water not be consumed due to manganese detected at more than 10 times above the EPA Health Advisory level.

Santee Sioux Nation vice chairman Kameron Runnels worries about the health of tribal members who still use the water for other purposes.

“We've had high rates of cancer here, especially among young people,” he said. “I think if you go around town here, there's probably four or five people under the age of 30 that have some form of cancer. Is that related to our water? We kind of have a suspicion that it is.”

In recent years, bottled water has been delivered to every home across the reservation. The tribe spends $8,000 to $9,000 weekly on the service.

The tribe is also working on plans for a 40-mile pipeline between the reservation and Randall Community Water District in South Dakota, which could provide safe drinking water at little operational cost to the tribe. The pipeline would go across the Missouri River and come with an estimated price tag of $43 million.

Despite the steep upfront cost, tribal chairman Alonzo Denney said it’s the best option for reservation.

“We're not looking for the band aid fixes,” he said. “We're not looking to put a quick little filtration system in that will probably be dead in a couple years. We're looking for a long-term solution so our children's children don't have to fight this battle.”

Progress on the project has been made in recent years. Funding has been secured from state, federal and tribal agencies and several preliminary routes for the pipeline have been identified.

Powell said he hopes the pipeline will be operational by the end of 2027.

“We've put together a really aggressive schedule for how we get to construction by spring of 2027,” he said. “It's really aggressive for a project of this size, but we've kind of committed to the tribe that that's where we're going with this.”

In June, the proposed pipeline was accepted into the FAST-41 program, which allows complex projects to go through an accelerated environmental process. If a project has a FAST-41 designation, federal agencies must complete their environmental reviews within one year. However, the one-year clock doesn’t start until a lead agency is identified, something that hasn’t happened yet for Santee.

“On a project of this complexity, the federal agencies, nobody wants to raise their hand and say, we'll be the lead federal agency, because it's a scary process, and there's just a lot of stuff involved there,” he said. “And so, the tribe has spent about the last two years going through different kind of rigmaroles trying to get to who the actual lead federal agency is.”

The process has left tribal leaders like Denney frustrated.

“We've been having environmental kickoff meetings and unable to get all federal agencies to sit at the table and have a conversation,” he said. “One may show up this week, another one may show up next week, but we can never get everybody to actually sit at the table and put a plan together.”

Tribal leaders say they’re thankful for Nebraska’s federal delegation – particularly Sen. Deb Fischer, who included $8.25 million for the project in a congressionally directed spending request last year. However, ongoing continuing resolutions have kept the funds from being dispensed. Runnels is worried that recent events in Washington won’t help either.

“With the government in this shutdown, that $8.5 million funding request with Senator Fischer is in jeopardy, I think,” he said.

Powell said around $1 million has been spent on preliminary planning and environmental studies for the project so far – money that’s come from tribe and the state of Nebraska. Runnels said the tribe is appreciative of state support at a time when the federal government has been slow to act.

“Thank God for Nebraska, the state of Nebraska, for coming through and awarding us that that law last summer with the water sustainability fund, because if we didn't have that, and if we didn't have some funds here in our tribe, I don’t know where we’d be at,” he said.

At a facility on the south side of the reservation, water continues to be pumped from manganese-rich wells and mixed with a strong dose of chlorine before its journey to the village, where residents will use it to wash clothes, take showers and clean dishes.

But Powell is confident that won’t be the reality for long. Despite the slow process so far, he said he has a plan to get a lead federal agency identified for the project within the month.

“Not all of the federal agencies will likely like the plan of how we're going to get there,” Powell said. “That's why I won't tell you the plan today, but there's a pretty clear plan for how I'll give a lead federal agency in the next month.”

In the meantime, Runnels says he concerned citizens can help by contacting their elected officials.

"Speaking to your senators and congressmen, making phone calls, and not only at the state capitol, but D.C., all that stuff helps," Runnels said. "And that goes for for anybody across the state that cares for clean water."