In March of 2019, the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota experienced a 100-year flood after a sudden and harsh blizzard created snow piles as high as five feet which melted just two days later during a warm spell. The overflow from nearby creeks and rivers destroyed homes, roadways, bridges and other structures, and left thousands of Oglala Sioux Tribal citizens stranded in place for over two weeks as the reservation fell into a state of emergency. In an interview with Lakota Elder Henry Red Cloud, he explained that two lives were lost in the aftermath of the flooding. One of the fatalities was a man in his 40s who had a heart attack; he lived just one mile from the hospital.
The Pine Ridge Service Unit of the Indian Health Service (IHS) has three health centers (Pine Ridge Hospital, Kyle Health Center, and Wanblee Health Center) and two health stations (Manderson and Lacreek) within the boundaries of the reservation that provide comprehensive care to community members. However, insufficient road conditions often make it a rough and difficult journey to get to appointments or have prescriptions refilled. There are also tribal members who can’t travel due to their medical condition and require care at home. In wet and snowy weather, a health emergency at home when roads are inaccessible puts these residents and the Tribe in a dire situation: costly aid by helicopter or no aid at all.
The aftermath of the blizzard was only the beginning. In the months following the 100-year flood, southwest South Dakota continued to experience widespread flooding and damage from a badgering of storms that swept across the state. In June of 2019 Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) then- President Julian Bear Runner declared yet another state of emergency, and the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) arrived to begin remediating the losses experienced by Oglala Sioux Tribal members. Since then, the Tribe has continued to pursue federal assistance for infrastructure and roadway improvements to help keep tribal members safe and medical care accessible.
When they received funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Fiscal Recovery Funds in 2022, OST quickly began searching for an engineering partner to take on what would become a lofty infrastructure and planning project. WBK Engineering, a Bodwé Group company, was awarded the contract, and the team led by Jeff Guerrero, project manager, started evaluating sites in September of 2022 in order to make recommendations on how to mitigate flooding and reduce road erosion.
In just two weeks, they visited over 50 sites that varied in length and condition, from 100-foot-long driveways to an 11-mile stretch of roadway. The team also evaluated over 200 locations with existing or needed culverts and dozens of miles of ditching. During these site visits, it became clearer just how many people were affected by the quality of the roads and the lack of proper drainage, as many of the sites were residential properties.
“Seventy percent of them were people’s driveways, you know, their homes,” said Jeff. “This is where they’ve built their life. If they can’t get basic medical attention, that’s a major issue.”
Although they had been given a list of sites to assess from the OST Department of Motor Fuels, it seemed that at each place the team visited, a new issue was brought forth by community members. The team noticed one road they evaluated as a critical access point for a resident that required at-home medical care was also the only road that accessed the Tribe’s powwow grounds. After visiting the sites, the team worked on their assessments and came up with a prioritization list based on condition status, length, and the number of people served by each site. One major issue that kept resurfacing was the lack of a proper drainage system. It seemed many of the roads were built directly over the area's natural floodplains.
“The main component was really the inadequate drainage,” said Jeff. “Most of the culverts that were present were undersized or not where they needed to be. We also noticed the roadways themselves were often the drainage path, so you can imagine the mess after a big rain.”
With their list of improvements submitted in January of 2023, the team began preparing their proposal for the second phase of the project, which included design services and construction documents for all the sites they evaluated. At the time, the OST had enough to fund roughly 10% of the total construction costs that was estimated. Based on the prioritization list and the funds available, the Tribe identified the initial sites to begin improvements. Construction of several sites was completed by the OST Department of Motor Fuels in 2024. The remaining sites are in the bid letting process for construction during 2025 and 2026.
The Pine Ridge Reservation has a total land area of 2.1 million acres, roughly the same size as Delaware. It includes the entirety of Oglala Lakota County, Bennett County, and the southern half of Jackson County. In a 2020 Primary Care Needs Assessment, the South Dakota Department of Health, Office of Rural Health found that all three of these counties ranked in the bottom quartile for Health Status, Health Access, and Health Risk Behaviors.
While there are many factors that impact the OST’s ability to improve the health of community members on the Pine Ridge Reservation and their access to medical services, making improvements to the roads and drainage systems is a major step in the right direction.
By providing the Oglala Sioux Tribe with construction ready documents for the sites identified thus far, we hope the Tribe will be able to acquire additional funding to complete all the improvements that were recommended and ensure tribal citizens are able to access medical care at the clinics, as well as at home. When the Tribe does eventually need updates to these plans, as conditions change and prioritization shifts, Jeff says the team at WBK Engineering is more than willing to jump back in and lend their expertise.
“It can be a difficult and time-consuming process, but there are funds out there that exist to help make these improvements,” said Jeff.
“We are excited about the work happening with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and look forward to supporting them again in the future.”
