Rapid City SD- The City of Rapid City announced this week that its outdoor watering restrictions, typically confined to June through August, will now continue through the entire year.
The decision follows the city’s move to elevate Pactola Reservoir’s storage condition from “Concern Status” to “Alert Status” — a designation that, under the city’s own conservation framework, keeps restrictions in place regardless of season.
The mechanics stay the same as the schedule already in effect since late March: no outdoor watering between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., odd-numbered addresses water on odd-numbered days, even-numbered addresses on even-numbered days, and no outdoor watering at all on the 31st of any month. Manual watering with a handheld hose, bucket, or sprinkling can remains allowed.
City Water Superintendent Eric Boyda said the decision hinges specifically on inflows into Pactola — the water actually flowing in from the watershed — rather than the reservoir’s current storage level.
August’s mean monthly inflow is normally 50.05 cubic feet per second; this August it was gauged at 20.6 cfs even after recent rain, and had dropped as low as 12.2 cfs before that. July’s inflows ran at just 30 percent of the historical average. Storage itself, Boyda noted, remains over 40,000 acre feet — down, but not at the historic lows Rapid City saw during the 1988-1991 or 2005-2008 droughts.
This is the second consecutive summer the city has had to move early. Last year, conservation measures began May 1, a month ahead of the normal June 1 start; this year, they began in late March.
The Wider Picture
Rapid City isn’t alone in watching its reservoirs this closely.
As of Aug. 8, roughly 76 percent of South Dakota is under active drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor — a mix of moderate, severe, and extreme classifications. South Dakota Public Broadcasting has reported the Black Hills specifically are experiencing dryness levels not seen in a decade.
The pattern extends well past the state line.
In Wyoming, water managers have described 2026 as potentially the driest year on record. The state engineer’s office issued a formal restriction on the North Platte River this year, cutting off junior water-rights holders — municipalities and industrial users included — from Guernsey Reservoir upstream, after mountain snowpack came in at just 35 to 63 percent of normal.
The rationale there mirrors Rapid City’s own: officials pointed to collapsing inflows and vanishing snowpack, not simply how much water happened to already be sitting in storage.
Colorado and Utah saw similarly severe classifications earlier this year, driven by the same historically warm, low-snow winter across the Interior West. Nationally, close to 40 percent of the United States was in active drought as of Aug. 11 — and the Northern Plains, where Rapid City sits, was among the regions reported as still worsening that week, not improving.
How long any of this lasts depends on precipitation and snowpack patterns heading into fall and winter — neither of which anyone can forecast with much confidence yet.
Sources: City of Rapid City official statement (Facebook, Aug. 20, 2026); U.S. Drought Monitor / National Drought Mitigation Center (South Dakota data, Aug. 8, 2026; national data, Aug. 11, 2026); South Dakota Public Broadcasting; Wyoming Public Media; WyoFile; Newsweek (citing USA Today and U.S. Drought Monitor reporting on Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming); National Weather Service Rapid City.
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