Box Elder

Water Quality Snapshot: Box Elder

Box Elder is a local-owned community water system that delivers drinking water to 14,000 residents in Box Elder, South Dakota (Pennington County) through 4,022 service connections. Its water is drawn from groundwater sources. EPA's Safe Drinking Water Information System records 330 total violations for this system , of which 47 (14%) are health-based, meaning a contaminant exceeded an EPA Maximum Contaminant Level or a required treatment technique failed. A further 274 monitoring and reporting violations are on file. The most recent violation on record dates to 2025.

The most frequently cited contaminant at this system is Gross Alpha, Excl. Radon and U, recorded in 24 violations (MCL, health-based). This system was sampled under EPA's UCMR5 PFAS monitoring program and no PFAS compounds were detected above the minimum reporting level.

Across South Dakota, EPA tracks 654 public water systems serving 915,901 people, with 56,254 cumulative violations and 8,399 health-based violations on record. About 92% of systems in the state carry at least one violation, and state-wide the average per system is 86 violations. Statewide, 42 of 49 UCMR5-tested systems have reported PFAS detections (85.7%).

Box Elder's 330 violations sit above the South Dakota average.

All figures above are sourced directly from EPA SDWIS and UCMR5 public data releases and are updated as EPA publishes new reporting cycles.