Fort Pierre in bureaucratic battle to buy land back from feds

Sen. Mike Rounds facilitating conversations between city officials, Army Corps of Engineers

One house and the city’s unfinished indoor fish cleaning station sit among eight lots owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. Those lots are unavailable for residential development. (Austin Goss/The Dakota Scout)

FORT PIERRE — South Dakota state lawmakers have spent a lot of time talking about “workforce housing” over the last several years.

From small communities to large, the need to increase the number of living options available to working class families has become a focal point across all levels of government, particularly as the population of the Rushmore State continues to tick upward.

No one gets that better than Mike Weisgram, a second-term lawmaker from Fort Pierre who helped usher through hotly contested legislative efforts to aid housing construction.

Prior to his current stint in the Legislature, Weisgram served as a City Council member in his community from 2015 to 2020.

“I was a city councilman, and we talked about housing being a challenge,” Weisgram said. “When I got asked to run for the Legislature it became one of the things I ran on.”

While other towns in the state embark on their own journey toward less burdensome building, Weisgram and his local counterparts are forced to watch 49 lots in Stanley County remain untouchable for residential purposes, tied up in federal government control.

Since the early 2000s, the Army Corps of Engineers has owned those lots, all of which are in close proximity to the Missouri River, purchased in the name of flood control.

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