Building on Raw Land Near Whitewood Creek, Lawrence County, SD

Land along the historic Whitewood Creek corridor in Lawrence County carries a specific, ongoing construction requirement most South Dakota parcels don't: an EPA-approved occupancy-permit process tied to decades of arsenic-laden mine tailings once deposited along the creek. The site was delisted from the Superfund program in 1996, but the institutional control built to manage its remaining contamination didn't expire with the delisting.

This page covers what's specific to Lawrence County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

A century of mine tailings left a specific, mapped contamination footprint

From 1877 to 1977, the Homestake Mining Company discharged arsenic-rich tailings directly into Whitewood Creek from its operations at Lead -- an estimated 75 million tons of tailings, including roughly 270,000 tons of arsenic, deposited along an 18-mile stretch of the creek running through Lawrence, Meade, and Butte Counties. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency listed the Whitewood Creek site on the National Priorities List in 1983, issued its Record of Decision for the first phase of remedial action in March 1990, completed remedial fieldwork by 1993, and formally deleted the site from the NPL in 1996 after finding it posed no significant threat to public health or the environment under then-current conditions.

Delisting closed out EPA's active remediation phase, but it did not mean the tailings themselves disappeared from the ground. Arsenic-laden material remains present within the historic deposition footprint along the creek, generally at levels EPA judged acceptable under the site's remedy -- which is precisely why a specific ongoing permitting safeguard was built into how new construction happens there, rather than leaving it to an ordinary building permit alone.

An occupancy-permit institutional control that outlived the Superfund listing

On November 29, 1993, EPA approved the Whitewood Creek Tailings Area Building Permit Handbook, developed specifically to guide implementation of institutional controls for new construction within the tailings corridor. Under that framework, Lawrence County requires an occupancy permit for new residences built within the historic tailings area -- a distinct step layered on top of, not a replacement for, the county's ordinary building-permit process administered by Planning & Zoning. In practice, this means a parcel that reads as ordinary buildable land along or near Whitewood Creek may require documentation of soil conditions, an approved handling or capping approach for any disturbed tailings material, and sign-off before a new home there can legally be occupied -- steps a buyer would not encounter on a comparable parcel elsewhere in the county.

EPA and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources have continued periodic Five-Year Reviews of the delisted site specifically to check whether the remedy and its institutional controls are still functioning as intended -- a strong signal that the occupancy-permit requirement is treated as a live, ongoing obligation rather than a historical footnote. Site documents, including past Five-Year Reviews, have been kept at the Whitewood Public Library as the designated local repository, with the Lawrence County Register of Deeds also holding at least an electronic copy of past review reports. Before buying raw land anywhere near the creek corridor for new construction, confirm directly with Lawrence County Planning & Zoning and South Dakota DANR's Superfund program whether the specific parcel falls within the mapped tailings-deposition area, and if so, what the current Building Permit Handbook process requires before you can build and occupy a home there -- don't assume a standard building permit alone covers it.

Building on Raw Land Near Whitewood Creek, Lawrence County, South Dakota

A century of mine tailings left a specific, mapped contamination footprint

An occupancy-permit institutional control that outlived the Superfund listing

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