Pierre, South Dakota

P I ERRE , SOUTH DAKOTA the city’s main employers. Brad Palmer, Director of Utilities for Pierre, is proud to say government employees work hard to give residents what they want. Six years ago the commission sent out a community survey asking what residents would like to see done in the community and what the priorities should be. One of the results of that survey was the desire to improve the quality of the municipal water. After Palmer and his team did some research and noted that the cost of the utilities would increase, they held a community vote. Feedback showed about 74 percent of people wanted the change, despite the cost increase. And so, the city is currently building a $37 million state-of-the-art water treatment facility. Palmer reports, “It will be an ultra-filtration system, that’s a new treatment technology. The building actually has a smaller footprint than some of your older plants and it will have SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition). It will be pretty much an automated plant that can, for the most part, run itself on any given day and it will be designed to serve the community, probably for the next 40 years. It’s being planned around Pierre growing for the next three to four decades.” The facility is expected to be up and running by the middle of 2022. The City of Pierre is situated along the picturesque Missouri River and has an abundance of well maintained trails, parks, and recreation complexes along the river, including an updated historical baseball stadium. Tom Farnsworth, Director of Parks and Recreation,