At 7:10 on Thursday morning, most Rapid City residents were still asleep. The ones who showed up to the Planning Commission meeting came because the ground beneath their neighborhood had been shaking before dawn.
What they learned—and what the city itself had only recently discovered—was that a foreign-owned cement company had been extracting minerals from 563 acres adjacent to their homes, a school, a Diocese retreat center, and senior housing for 25 years. Without a single city permit.
The city found out the same way most uncomfortable truths surface: through paperwork.
GCC Dacotah, Inc. filed a routine building permit application. The city went to process it and discovered it had no legal mechanism to do so. There was no established zoning district on the property. There had never been one.
”When sold in 2001 the owner could continue on in legal non-conforming status,” Community Development Director Vicki Fisher told the commission at 26:37. “When they wanted to do some improvements they needed a building permit. We could not pursue a building permit because we don’t have a zone.”
Twenty-five years of industrial extraction. Exposed by a building permit application.
The Shell Game
The five cases before the commission Thursday morning—26OA002, 26RZ008, 26RZ009, 26RZ010, and 26RZ011—covered 563 acres of active mining operations.
The city’s own project reports described the largest parcel, at 396.87 acres, as one that “currently contains mining operations.” A second parcel at 2211 Deadwood Avenue “is used as part of a larger mining operation.” A third, at 4245 Hidden Valley Road, sits adjacent to residential zoning.
None of the five filings referenced a geotechnical assessment. None required one as a condition of approval.
Planning Commissioner Kelly Arquello acknowledged at 34:05 that the operation had been running for 25 years under federal and state oversight—oversight the city had no part in.
At 19:54, city planner Jessica Olson announced that GCC Dacotah had agreed to stop blasting as part of the rezoning process.
The concession was notable for what it confirmed: blasting had been occurring, residents had raised it as a concern, and the city had negotiated its cessation without requiring any study of what 25 years of extraction had done to the ground beneath the surrounding neighborhood.
Earlier in the meeting, at 39:07, Commissioner Eirik Heikes had raised concerns about the burning of tires at the site. He voted no on the largest parcel—the 396.87-acre active mining operation.
The Precedent and the Liability Trap
Planning Commissioner Vince Vidal made the larger stakes explicit at 1:17:55.
”While I don’t want to conflict two ideas, but Blackhawk had sinkholes that destroyed some of those residences,” he said.
Hideaway Hills
He was referring to Hideaway Hills. In April 2020, a sinkhole 85 feet deep and approximately 650 feet long opened beneath a subdivision near Black Hawk, South Dakota—built over ground that had been hollowed out by the same state-owned cement plant that previously operated the Rapid City site. Twelve homes were evacuated immediately.
More than 200 plaintiffs sued the state for over $60 million. However, a circuit court judge recently dismissed the lawsuit, ruling the state is protected by sovereign immunity. The homeowners are now appealing to the South Dakota Supreme Court.
If the high court upholds that ruling, the state will be legally shielded from damages caused by its past cement plant operations.
The Rapid City Planning Commission’s vote Thursday morning initiated the process of bringing the former state-owned Rapid City site under full municipal jurisdiction—effectively adopting the 563-acre footprint.
The Corporation Involved
GCC Dacotah, Inc. was incorporated in South Dakota in June 2000—six months before the state legislature added the statutory provision that would allow its operations to proceed outside municipal jurisdiction.
The company is a subsidiary of Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, a Mexican cement producer headquartered in Chihuahua, Mexico. Its principal officers have listed addresses in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, Colorado. Its Rapid City plant, at 501 N. Saint Onge Street, has operated continuously since the 2001 acquisition.
Federal air quality records show GCC Dacotah was engaging EPA Region 8 on emissions permits for Kiln No. 6 as early as November 2001—the same year as the property acquisition.
State regulators received the same filing simultaneously. The city received nothing.
The state held federally issued air permits and state water discharge permits for the operation throughout this period. The city held nothing.
What Happens Next
The Rapid City City Council is scheduled to take up the rezoning actions on first reading June 15.
The full Planning Commission meeting of June 4, 2026, is available HERE
Quotes cited in this story appear at the timestamps indicated.
Rapid City Proactively Moves to Define It’s Cement Plant Future
How Rapid City Homeowners Unwittingly Subsidized a Global Cement Giant for 25 Years
This is an ongoing Sentinel Investigation.
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