The state shall proceed as quickly as possible to enact and implement at the state and federal levels a settlement, pursuant to §§ 46A-15-5 to 46A-15-14, inclusive, of South Dakota’s claims resulting from damages and unfulfilled federal obligations to South Dakota relating to the Pick-Sloan Missouri Basin Program created by the Congress of the United States in the 1944 Flood Control Act. The damages and obligations include, but are not limited to, the loss of nearly five hundred thirty thousand acres of land inundated in South Dakota by four Pick-Sloan dams constructed in South Dakota, failure of the federal government to honor its commitment to develop nine hundred seventy–two thousand acres of Pick-Sloan irrigation in South Dakota, a grossly inequitable distribution of Pick-Sloan benefits and costs among the states of the Missouri Basin, significant environmental and bank erosion damages caused by the construction and operation of the Pick-Sloan dams, the loss to South Dakota’s economy of more than one billion one hundred million dollars in foregone economic activity because of the removal from production of inundated lands, and the loss of future opportunity for development by the state of the resources of the Missouri River.

Source: SL 1988, ch 369, § 1.