Lewis and Clark Regional Water System Officials Upset with Federal Funding

SIOUX FALLS - The board chairman of the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System says the amount of money for the project in President Barack Obama's fiscal 2014 budget proposal "leaves us completely dead in the water."

Obama has included $3.2 million for the ongoing project to bring Missouri River water to 300,000 people in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa. Chairman Red Arndt says that isn't enough to do any construction this year. He calls it a "travesty."

The project has been in the works more than a decade but is only 65 percent complete. Water started flowing through the system last summer, but funding to complete the project has become uncertain due to federal budget cuts.

Arndt says that at the current rate of federal funding, the project will never be completed.

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