English Bulldog Puppies for Sale in Sioux Falls, SD

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - Friday marked the start of intentional flight cancellations under the FAA’s direction. Four percent of flights are being reduced to help ease the strain put on air traffic controllers affected by the shutdown.

These cancellations were directed at major airports around the country. However, since airlines are cutting smaller flights, those are affecting airports like Sioux Falls.

So far, we know of one departing flight and one incoming flight that were canceled. Those were with Delta Airlines, and both involved the Minneapolis airport. These flights were supposed to take off just before the one o’clock hour.

We told y’all yesterday about the importance of monitoring your flight status on the apps that these airlines have. Dakota News Now spoke to a AAA representative about other ways people can adjust if they are affected, and he says Don’t be afraid to get help.

“We also recommend that if you can, book air travel through a travel agent. That way, you have a point of contact, an advocate for you that can work out the details of rescheduling a flight or putting you on another flight,” Shawn Steward, AAA Manager, Public and Government Affairs, said.

These cancellations will continue until the shutdown is resolved.

Just about the majority of these flight airlines, such as United, Southwest, Delta, American Airlines, they’re offering flight rescheduling or cancellations at free or reduced costs.

With regional flights such as Friday’s flights to and from Minneapolis getting canceled, Steward says it’s important to consider what is comfortable to drive if a flight is canceled.

“It’s just important to think about those possibilities, assess your different options in case your flight is impacted. So have a backup plan to drive or rent a car to get to your destination.”

Cancelations aren’t expected to be too much of an issue here in Sioux Falls over the weekend, since that’s considered the slow time of the week.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - A pinning ceremony for Vietnam War veterans was held at the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls on Friday.

The US Vietnam War Commemoration Program officially launched in 2012 under the Department of Defense, and it honors the 50th anniversary of the war. The program must end on November 11, 2025, concluding after 13 years.

“The conversations during the ceremony are powerful. But honestly, those that happen once we’re done are even more impactful for me,” said Representative Dusty Johnson. “The wives who comes up and tells me that this is the first time that their husband has talked in any detail about his service. The first time that someone from the federal government has thanked him for that service.”

On Friday, there were exactly 30 veterans honored and seven posthumously honored through family members by Representative Dusty Johnson, who led the ceremonies. The men acknowledged the hardships they experienced but were still grateful to have served.

“I was sworn in three days before my 19th birthday. And I got to tell you, I was scared,” said Mel Zellmer, who served in the Army during the Vietnam War. “I had never been out of Ashley. Never been up away from my family. But, like they say, every dark cloud has a silver lining. If I wouldn’t have got drafted, I’d probably never have left Ashley. There’s nothing there.”

Johnson has commemoratively pinned and recognized around 1,300 Vietnam veterans during the time of this program. This was also the 90th ceremony held in the state of South Dakota.

“There are still tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans and Vietnam-era veterans just in South Dakota that we have not had an opportunity to connect with,” said Johnson. “We’re going to keep working hard. We’re doing the work. They can end the program if they want to. But this program is too important for us to just blindly follow their timeline.”

While the National program may be coming to an end on Tuesday, Congressman Johnson is determined to keep having these pinning ceremonies so Vietnam veterans in South Dakota can be recognized for their services.

Copyright 2025 Dakota News Now. All rights reserved.

BIG STONE CITY, S.D. – This small city in northeastern South Dakota already serves as a major hub for energy – it is home to a coal-fired power plant, a Poet Biofuels ethanol plant and a major electrical substation that is critical to the region’s power grid.

A planned multistate, multibillion-dollar expansion of the region’s transmission system would make Big Stone City an even bigger spoke for the Upper Midwest’s energy economy.

If a proposed 765-kilovolt transmission line through town is built in the next few years as planned, it would easily become the highest-capacity power line in the state. It also would set the stage for new natural gas, wind and solar electricity generation in South Dakota.

“The key piece here is that transmission infrastructure supports all development,” said Matt Prorok, an electricity policy analyst for the nonprofit Great Plains Institute, based in Minneapolis. “It’s essentially creating access to buying or selling whatever you need when you want to.”

That means new jobs and greater need for trained workers, and not just in the state’s growing renewable energy economy. More capacity to move electricity through the state will also create opportunities for a wide range of new industrial, commercial and residential growth in the coming decades.

Furthermore, the high-capacity line also would strengthen and stabilize the region’s electric grid during weather disasters, generate numerous new jobs in the energy and construction industries and ultimately lower costs for ratepayers, according to Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, the regional grid operator behind the project.

South Dakota is expected to see several new transmission line projects in the coming years. The major one through Big Stone City is part of wide-ranging plans by two major power grid operators to expand electric capacity through dozens of Great Plains and Midwestern states over the next 10 to 20 years with a price tag of nearly $30 billion.

The new transmission line projects will pave the way for growth not only in energy production but also for a variety of commercial, industrial and residential developments, Prorok said.

Prorok said that while planning, forecasting, siting and funding transmission lines is a complex, multi-year process, the benefits can be simplified by comparing the expanded lines to roads in farm country. As new roads are built or existing roads are expanded, it opens the door for more commerce on a wide variety of fronts.

For instance, higher-capacity transmission lines could prepare the way for new power plants and wind farms as well as for industrial plants, residential complexes or new technologies like data centers to be built in South Dakota or neighboring states, he said.

Beyond that, the new transmission lines will protect utility customers by allowing for energy to flow during natural disasters and should ultimately save ratepayers money, Prorok said.

"Customers will pay less overall, because when transmission projects get approved, they are required to demonstrate a net benefit over time," he said. "The key piece here is that when you spend a dollar on transmission, you’re going to save more than a dollar on the production side."

South Dakota is part of two separate regional transmission organizations that manage the electrical grid in multiple states.

MISO manages energy flow in 15 states, including the northeast portion of South Dakota and in Manitoba, Canada. The Southwest Power Pool, or SPP, oversees energy flow in 14 states, including most of South Dakota.

Both organizations have proposed major transmission line expansions to increase the nation’s capacity to generate and move electricity.

MISO has plans for 488 individual projects to be done over the next 10 years at a cost of $22 billion.

In South Dakota, the MISO expansion — part of an expansive project known as Tranche 2.1 — calls for construction of a 345-kilovolt line from Alexandria, Minnesota, to Big Stone City and development of a new 765-kilovolt line from Big Stone City to White and to the city of Trimont in southwestern Minnesota.

SPP has approved plans for 89 transmission projects to include 2,333 miles of new lines and about 500 miles of rebuilt lines at an overall cost of $7.7 billion. In its 2024 Integrated Transmission Plan, SPP said that its power network “is facing a generational challenge as the need arises to balance new sources of demand, like data centers, crypto mining, mining, and oil and gas production, with the retirement of conventional resources that use coal and natural (gas) as fuel sources.”

The SPP projects in South Dakota would include a new 50-mile, 115-kilovolt line from Carpenter to Lake Preston, reconstruction of an existing power line in Watertown and the construction of a new 345-kilovolt line for 440 miles from Belfield, North Dakota, to New Underwood in western South Dakota and then south to Laramie, Wyoming.

The 345-kilovolt line is needed, according to the SPP plan, “to address the rapid load growth in North Dakota and South Dakota” and to “contribute to SPP’s strategic opportunity to develop a robust ‘grid of the future.’”

The new transmission lines in and out of South Dakota should open the door to future development of energy in the state, especially in regard to sustainable sources such as wind and solar.

South Dakota has been a national leader in rapid expansion of wind energy production over the past decade and has a welcoming environment for greater solar production as well.

As of 2024, South Dakota had 3,600 megawatts of wind energy in production, according to Public Utilities Commission records. About 60% of the wind production has come online since 2020, a five-year period in which the state added about 2,100 megawatts of production by almost 700 new turbines.

However, applications for new wind production facilities have slowed dramatically, largely due to a lack of transmission line capacity in the state and Great Plains region.

“We’re pretty much stalled right now,” PUC Commissioner Chris Nelson told News Watch.

The South Dakota PUC is currently reviewing applications for three new energy projects in the state, Nelson said.

Missouri River Energy wants to build a 130-megawatt natural gas plant near Toronto. Black Hills Energy plans a 98-megawatt natural gas plant in Rapid City. And Philip Wind Partners has applied to build a 300-megawatt wind farm with 87 turbines northwest of Philip.

Those projects were able to find space on the existing power transmission network, Nelson said. But in large part, South Dakota’s capacity to build new wind farms, solar fields or power plants is restricted by the fact the existing power grid needs to expand to handle more energy, he said.

“There’s still some of these developments happening, but it’s certainly slowed down from what we saw five or six years ago as the transmission lines have filled up,” Nelson said. “At this point, our capacity is limited, but MISO believes that this large backbone of new transmission lines in the upper Midwest will allow additional generation sources to be sited.”

The energy industry is keeping a close eye on the actions of President Donald Trump’s administration, which has canceled funding for numerous energy expansion projects across the country.

The Associated Press reported in early October that Trump had canceled nearly $8 billion in grants for hundreds of proposed clean-energy related projects, most of them in states that did not vote for him in the last election.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times also reported in October that it had obtained a new list of $15 billion in clean-energy project cuts being considered by the Trump administration.

Nelson, the South Dakota PUC commissioner, said he is not aware of how those cuts would affect transmission line projects, but added that they could limit development of energy sources that would use expanded transmission capacity and therefore lower the viability of the need for the new lines and expansion of existing lines. Seth Blomeley, a spokesperson for SPP, told News Watch in an email only that SPP will “continue to evaluate the project.”

Any grant cancellations would increase the amount of investment required by power companies, which would shift more costs of transmission lines away from government subsidies and further onto ratepayers, Prorok said.

Nelson told News Watch that the main government program aiding energy development in South Dakota are the production tax credits, which may be allowed to expire in the next few years, raising the cost of new projects in the state.

The MISO expansion plan also has been the subject of complaints filed with federal energy regulators arguing that the transmission line plans should be halted because the grid operator overstated the financial benefits of the new lines. Those complaints remain under consideration.

Otter Tail Power supports efforts to expand the power grid in South Dakota and other states where it operates, said Rebecca Michael, company spokesperson..

“We’re part of MISO, who acts as the air traffic controller for the energy grid, ensuring the right amount of electricity for approximately 45 million people,” Michael wrote to News Watch in an email. “We, along with energy companies throughout the region, have been working closely with MISO over many years to develop transmission solutions as the region’s grid continues to evolve.”

Michael said Otter Tail and other energy producers regularly take steps to ensure a stable workforce, working closely with prospective employees and educational institutions to train and hire employees who are able to have successful careers in the industry.

“We have strong relationships with technical institutes as well as colleges and universities in each of the three states (Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota) we serve. These relationships include providing scholarship funding, serving on program advisory boards, and providing internships for students,” she wrote. “During their careers, craft employees often progress through an apprenticeship program, achieving journeyman status. From there, employees can advance to lead or foreman positions. The work is often challenging and rewarding, and our employees live our mission every day.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story first appeared on sdnewswatch.com.

The state of South Dakota opened its $20 million, 400-acre shooting range complex Friday.

Members of the state Game, Fish and Parks Commission and other dignitaries were on hand for a grand opening ceremony.

“On behalf of the commission, we are excited for what the Pete Lien and Sons Shooting Sports Complex will mean for South Dakota’s outdoor future,” Commission Chairwoman Stephanie Rissler told South Dakota Searchlight in advance of the event.

The complex , located about 10 miles north of Rapid City, is one of the largest public shooting ranges in the nation. It includes rifle, pistol, shotgun and archery ranges, and will host recreational shooters, safety programs, marksmanship competitions and law enforcement training.

The complex is open seven days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. May through August, and from 8:30 a.m. to sunset September through April.

The facility’s 50-, 100- and 300-yard shooting bays and archery range are free to use on a first-come, first-served basis. Memberships are required for the long-range bay, shotgun area, sporting clays course and north range. An individual membership is $100, a family membership is $150 and a day pass is $20.

Rissler said the facility gives new and experienced shooters a place to learn and practice in a safe environment.

“This complex will serve outdoor enthusiasts today and for generations to come,” she said. “A big thank you to all the partners and sponsors who helped make this vision a reality and continue to showcase the incredible outdoor opportunities South Dakota has to offer.”

The project did not have a smooth path. Lawmakers refused to appropriate state money for it, and some were angered last year when they learned that then-Gov. Kristi Noem gave the project $13.5 million from the governor-controlled Future Fund.

A drawing shows the layout of the Pete Lien and Sons Shooting Sports Complex. (Image courtesy of South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks)South Dakota employers pay a fee to the Future Fund when they submit payroll taxes to the unemployment benefits program. State law says the Future Fund must be used “for purposes related to research and economic development for the state.” Unlike other funds administered by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, Future Fund expenses don’t go through a board of citizen appointees for vetting or approval.

An additional $6.6 million of funding for the shooting range complex has been given or pledged by a total of 58 donors. The Department of Game, Fish and Parks said this week that $3.4 million of the donations are in hand, and $3.2 million are pledged.

The donations include about $2 million from gun-industry companies or organizations , including Smith & Wesson, a Tennessee-based gun manufacturer, and Glock, an Austrian gun manufacturer.

Pete Lien and Sons Inc., a mining, concrete and construction aggregate company based in Rapid City, obtained naming rights for the facility with an $800,000 donation and an additional $1.2 million pledge, to be paid within three years.

This story was written by one of our partner news agencies. Forum Communications Company uses content from agencies such as Reuters, Kaiser Health News, Tribune News Service and others to provide a wider range of news to our readers. Learn more about the news services FCC uses here.

The most expensive neighborhoods in Sioux Falls

Homebuyers and sellers are navigating a slow and expensive housing market, with rising prices and stagnant demand keeping many on the sidelines. This comes amid rising economic uncertainty and growing wealth concentration. But luxury homes—multimillion-dollar estates, sleek penthouses, and one-of-a-kind custom builds—are still selling, even as most buyers pull back.

Most people can't afford high-end homes, although they're still fun to dream about. So, to highlight where luxury real estate is commanding the highest prices, Redfin analyzed the most expensive neighborhoods in the Sioux Falls metro area—and showcased a few of the area's standout listings (when possible).

Note: Redfin's analysis focused on metro areas, meaning some neighborhoods fell within smaller nearby cities. Listings and data were gathered on October 15, 2025.

Median sale price: $444,000 | Median days on market: 23 days

1101 S 2Nd Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57105

- List price: $440,000

- Beds: 3 | Baths: 2 | Square feet: 2,133

- See 1101 S 2Nd Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 on Redfin.com

1701 S Carter Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57105

- List price: $650,000

- Beds: 4 | Baths: 2.75 | Square feet: 2,399

- See 1701 S Carter Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 on Redfin.com

220 E 27Th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105

- List price: $995,000

- Beds: 4 | Baths: 3.25 | Square feet: 3,950

- See 220 E 27Th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 on Redfin.com

605 E 21St St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105

- List price: $997,000

- Beds: 3 | Baths: 2.25 | Square feet: 2,500

- See 605 E 21St St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 on Redfin.com

Median sale price: $368,000 | Median days on market: 14 days

703 E El Dorado Ct, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

- List price: $279,900

- Beds: 2 | Baths: 2 | Square feet: 1,596

- See 703 E El Dorado Ct, Sioux Falls, SD 57108 on Redfin.com

705 E 73Rd Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

- List price: $590,000

- Beds: 2 | Baths: 1.75 | Square feet: 2,059

- See 705 E 73Rd Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57108 on Redfin.com

711 E 70Th Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

- List price: $489,900

- Beds: 2 | Baths: 1.75 | Square feet: 1,868

- See 711 E 70Th Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57108 on Redfin.com

737 E El Dorado Ct, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

- List price: $279,000

- Beds: 2 | Baths: 1.75 | Square feet: 1,598

- See 737 E El Dorado Ct, Sioux Falls, SD 57108 on Redfin.com

Median sale price: $358,750 | Median days on market: 35 days

2009 S Melanie Ln, Sioux Falls, SD 57103

- List price: $304,900

- Beds: 3 | Baths: 2.5 | Square feet: 1,882

- See 2009 S Melanie Ln, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 on Redfin.com

2805 S Whetstone Cir, Sioux Falls, SD 57103

- List price: $410,000

- Beds: 3 | Baths: 2 | Square feet: 2,101

- See 2805 S Whetstone Cir, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 on Redfin.com

4409 E 36Th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57103

- List price: $355,000

- Beds: 4 | Baths: 2 | Square feet: 1,932

- See 4409 E 36Th St, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 on Redfin.com

4509 E Belmont St, Sioux Falls, SD 57103

- List price: $307,400

- Beds: 4 | Baths: 1.75 | Square feet: 1,850

- See 4509 E Belmont St, Sioux Falls, SD 57103 on Redfin.com

Median sale price: $347,500 | Median days on market: 15 days

3509 W Hughes Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

- List price: $296,900

- Beds: 4 | Baths: 2 | Square feet: 2,225

- See 3509 W Hughes Pl, Sioux Falls, SD 57108 on Redfin.com

6803 S Witzke Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

- List price: $299,900

- Beds: 3 | Baths: 2.5 | Square feet: 1,901

- See 6803 S Witzke Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57108 on Redfin.com

7000 S Hughes Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57108

- List price: $479,900

- Beds: 4 | Baths: 3.75 | Square feet: 3,134

- See 7000 S Hughes Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57108 on Redfin.com

Median sale price: $327,500 | Median days on market: 17 days

1104 S Main Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57105

- List price: $250,000

- Beds: 3 | Baths: 1 | Square feet: 1,148

- See 1104 S Main Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 on Redfin.com

604 S 5Th Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57104

- List price: $300,000

- Beds: 4 | Baths: 1.75 | Square feet: 1,507

- See 604 S 5Th Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57104 on Redfin.com

702 E 21St St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105

- List price: $349,900

- Beds: 3 | Baths: 0.75 | Square feet: 1,250

- See 702 E 21St St, Sioux Falls, SD 57105 on Redfin.com

900 S 4Th Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57104

- List price: $200,000

- Beds: 2 | Baths: 1 | Square feet: 1,197

- See 900 S 4Th Ave, Sioux Falls, SD 57104 on Redfin.com