Engineering a Sustainable Solution



Dams on the Missouri River were intended to thwart floods. As we all know that isn’t always the case. Just ask Rick and Mary Hurd who live west of Springfield, South Dakota in Charles Mix County. You just don’t know what kind of hand the river will deal each year when it comes to farming.

“In a dry year, the river is your friend, but when everyone else has had too much water, we’ve really had w-a-a-y too much water,” Rick said at harvest time in 2019.

Mary tells us about the frustrations of working to get sedimentation addressed over the years, starting with her late father Robert. “He was a problem solver and I’m looking at this mess of water out here again and thinking of the grandkids who will have this land someday. And will it be a farm or will it be a wetlands? What will it be?”

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