It’s All About the Water is an environmental nonprofit fighting to stop uranium mining in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Founded in 2012, the organization began as a grassroots effort opposing the Dewey-Burdock project—a proposed 12,000-acre in-situ recovery (ISR) uranium mine that poses significant threats to the region’s groundwater, including the Lakota aquifer, which supplies drinking water to thousands of people and several tribal communities in South Dakota. Since then, threats to the area’s groundwater have been compounded by new mining operations, including gold, lithium, and graphite mines. Serving the people and ecosystems of South Dakota’s Black Hills, the group engages in community organizing, public education, policy advocacy, and litigation. “It’s all about the water,” says Sarah Peterson, the organization’s executive director. “We can’t live here without water. We are here to protect the water so that our way of life and all living things will continue to live.”
An aerial image of the Darrow Mine, one of many uranium mines established in South Dakota’s Black Hills in the 1950s. Photo: Black Hills Clean Water Alliance
A volunteer-led organization with no full-time staff, It’s All About the Water is a community-driven group protecting this most vital natural resource. The group’s decade-long educational campaigns informed the public about the risks that uranium mining poses to South Dakota’s groundwater. In 2022, these efforts culminated in a ballot initiative making uranium mining a nuisance in Fall River County, South Dakota—a designation that protects the county’s water from future uranium mining operations. The organization’s policy advocacy also influenced the enactment of Public Land Order 7956—legislation protecting 20,510 acres of the Black Hills National Forest and the Pactola Reservoir-Rapid Creek Watershed from mining and other forms of habitat destruction. It’s All About the Water is currently collaborating with the Clean Water Alliance and Dakota Rural Action to host informational meetings to raise awareness of the risks posed by graphite mining operations at Pe’ Sla, a site located in the heart of South Dakota’s Black Hills that is sacred to the Lakota people.
South Dakota’s Pactola Reservoir, the largest and deepest reservoir in the Black Hills. Photo: Kimon Berlin/Wikimedia Commons