A century ago, South Dakota stepped in where private industry wouldn’t. With vast deposits of the raw materials needed for cement production sitting in the Black Hills and no private developer willing to build, Gov. Peter Norbeck championed a state-owned plant. Voters amended the state constitution to make it possible, and Dacotah Cement was born. For 80 years it operated as the only state-owned cement plant in America, until Gov. Bill Janklow soldi it to Mexican industrial firm Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua — known as GCC — for $252 million in a hastily called special session in December 2000.
GCC has operated it since, completing a $100 million expansion in 2019 and growing annual production capacity to over 1.1 million metric tons. To put that in perspective, a single mile of four-lane highway requires roughly 10,000 tons of concrete. GCC’s Rapid City plant produces enough cement annually to pave more than 100 miles of highway — and still have material left over. Or think of it this way: that annual output weighs roughly the same as 8,000 fully loaded Boeing 747s.
The Cement Plant Zoning District
What the city of Rapid City never did in those 25 years of private ownership was build a regulatory framework specifically tailored to the site. Until now.
Ordinance No. 6715, which introduces a new Chapter 17.68 CP Cement Plant Zoning District into the Rapid City Municipal Code, goes before city council for its first reading Monday evening. The ordinance followed the full public process — reviewed by the Planning Commission on May 7, where staff recommended approval, before moving to the Legal and Finance Committee on May 13.
The catalyst came when the question of tire-derived fuel arose during committee discussions. Burning tires as kiln fuel — known in the industry as TDF — is a legal and EPA-regulated practice common in cement manufacturing worldwide. But in Rapid City, which sits in a valley prone to air quality inversions, the mention of it made people uncomfortable.
Rather than leave that question — and others like it — to be decided on a case-by-case basis, Community Development Director Vicki Fisher moved to build a comprehensive permitting framework that would govern not just GCC’s current operations but any future businesses that might operate within a cement plant designation.
The CP designation is distinct from standard industrial zoning. A conventional industrial zone is designed to accommodate a wide range of manufacturing and heavy commercial uses. The CP district is narrower and more specific — built around the particular characteristics and risks of cement production, including dust, emissions, and fuel sources.
Think of it less as a general industrial permit and more as a tailored rulebook written for one kind of operation, with enough flexibility to bring in compatible future businesses without opening the door to uses the community hasn’t considered or consented to.
“That’s clear as mud, isn’t it,” Fisher said at the May 13 Legal and Finance Committee meeting — a remark that drew laughter given the subject matter, but also captured something real about the complexity of what the city is trying to accomplish.
The CP district is designed to get ahead of problems rather than react to them — establishing clear permitted uses, conditional uses, and prohibited activities before anything slips through a regulatory gap.
Monday’s vote is a first reading only — the first of two required steps before an ordinance becomes law in Rapid City. If council approves it Monday, the ordinance will return for a second reading and final vote at a future meeting.
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