$215 M South Dakota Water Reclamation Plant Expansion Serves Growing Region

South Dakota water reclamation plant expansion underway in Sioux Falls.

In a project planned for completion by 2025, the City of Sioux Falls, is addressing wastewater needs created by the area’s growing population. Using grant funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and a low-interest loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency via a state revolving fund program, city officials will rehabilitate and expand its 23-acre water reclamation plant.

The expansion is the largest growth project planned since this South Dakota water reclamation plant opened in the 1980s.

The Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) Master Plan highlights the region’s need to enhance the reliability of an aging system, averting risk of failure for the facility and select lift stations, and to increase existing hydraulic capacity for the water reclamation facility, collection system and lift stations to serve a growing population, improve WRF treatment options, and increase organic capacity.

Mark Perry, wastewater superintendent for Sioux Falls, described the expansion to the Sioux Falls Regional Water Reclamation Plant as a “monumental undertaking.”

The project calls for:

• construction of a headworks building where wastewater enters the facility
• installation of generators and electrical system upgrades
• three additional aeration basins
• four additional final clarifier pools
• expansion of chlorine treatment areas with more storage tanks

As Sioux Falls City Council Member, Alex Jensen, called out, the objective of his family and other community members is to “grow up here, watch this city grow, and… when you flush the toilet, the stuff stays down.”

Read more in the Engineering News-Record.

View last summer’s South Dakota water, plant expansion groundbreaking with City of Sioux Falls Director of Public Works Director, Mark Cotter, and other community officials in the video below.