BLACK HAWK, S.D. – Darrell Koepp stomped his feet up and down, shook his head and body side to side, waved his arms and wriggled all the fingers on his hands.

He looked somewhat amusing, but there was nothing funny about the demonstration Koepp gave outside his rural Black Hawk homestead located 100 yards from the edge of two active limestone mines.

“When they’re blasting and those shots come, you can stand right here and feel it in your entire body, and you go like this even before you hear anything,” Koepp told a News Watch reporter.

For more than 40 years, Darrell and his wife, Jennifer, lived a peaceful lifestyle in a two-story home on woodlands her father owned at the end of Ash Street in the foothills of western Black Hawk, located about 10 miles northwest of Rapid City.

But after they both retired, life changed when Pete Lien & Sons and Simon Contractors began blasting rock, operating large bulldozers and running trucks to and from the limestone mines located on Quarry Road west of Black Hawk.

The blasting and mining began around 2023, and the work at the mines sometimes begins as early as 6:30 a.m. at least five days a week, Darrell said.

“You worked all your life to get what you got, and people like this (from the mining companies) say they want to be neighborly and whatnot, and this is what they do to you?” said Darrell, 71, a retired auto and heavy equipment mechanic.

The Koepps said an elevated earthen berm that forms the eastern edge of the mine serves as the only protection from the sounds, shockwaves and debris. 

“The stuff we’re breathing is horrible,” he said.

Darrell and Jennifer said they have spoken with Lien and Simon mining companies, the state and local lawmakers, but no one has been able to provide any relief.

There is no local zoning in Meade County, where the Koepps live, but all mines in South Dakota are required to follow laws that include required inspections and annual reports.

Jennifer, 67, said the blasting has caused her kitchen cupboard to fall down, opened a crack in the hallway ceiling and led a support beam in the dining room to droop 2 inches.

Darrell said the concrete foundation of their back stairs has shifted significantly, deck boards have fallen off and things in his garage are covered in dust.

The couple was aware of mining in the Black Hawk area before they built their home in the early 1980s, Darrell said. He said he called mining companies who assured him there wasn’t sufficient limestone in their neighborhood to warrant significant mining.

Darrell said blasting takes place two or three times per month, and he typically gets a cellphone call 20 to 30 minutes warning of a pending blast. But the warnings do little to mitigate the impacts.

According to the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Pete Lien & Sons made its first request to begin work on its Black Hawk South mining project in 1989.

The first mention of mining the northernmost mine section, which is now affecting some Black Hawk residents, came in Lien’s 2022 annual report on the project. Lien did not respond to a call and email from News Watch seeking comment.

Cheryl Gustafson, a regional manager for Simon, said in an email to News Watch, “Simon blasting activities at our Black Hawk quarry are conducted in accordance with state and federal regulations, performed during normal daytime business hours by a licensed third-party blaster, and supported by advance notification and open communication with nearby residents,” 

The records do not indicate any violations or fines issued against either of the companies regarding their Black Hawk operations.

The experiences of the Koepps provide a “100% relevant example” for the roughly two dozen families that are battling a Simon limestone mine that has been approved for land in and around the nearby town of Piedmont, said Chris Greenberg, who is leading efforts to block the proposed Piedmont mine.

“What they want to do here is exactly what people in Black Hawk are going through, with frequent blasting and dust everywhere,“ he said.

South Dakota News Watch is an independent nonprofit. Read, subscribe for free and donate at sdnewswatch.org. Contact content director Bart Pfankuch: 605-937-9398/ bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.