Garden City, SD
Exceeded the action level in the past
Latest 90th-percentile lead: 1 ppb (monitoring period 2025-2025). The federal action level is 15 ppb today and drops to 10 ppb in Nov 2027; EPA's health goal is 0. The latest result is under the action level, but this system has gone over 15 ppb before. Lead comes from pipes, not the source water, so a home with a lead service line can still be exposed. Test your own tap.
Who runs the water here
Garden City serves about 33 people through 43 service connections, which makes it a very small system under EPA's size classes. It is owned by a local government (city, town, county or district) and draws groundwater, in Clark County, South Dakota. EPA system ID: SD4600137. Ask the utility on your bill for your address in their service line inventory.
Lead results over time
That is down 2 ppb from 3 ppb in the period ending 2023. The highest 90th-percentile result EPA holds for Garden City is 54 ppb across 6 monitoring periods, 1 of them over the 15 ppb action level.
| Period ending | 90th-percentile lead |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 1 ppb |
| 2023 | 3 ppb |
| 2020 | 2 ppb |
| 2018 | 1 ppb |
| 2018 | 2 ppb |
| 2017 | 54 ppb over 15 |
Against other South Dakota systems
Of the 458 South Dakota systems with a lead result, the median latest reading is 2 ppb; 0 are over 15 ppb right now and 6 have gone over at some point. Garden City's 1 ppb sits at the 9th percentile in South Dakota and the 50th nationally (higher means more lead).
Other water systems in Clark County
5 other systems share Clark County; 1 of them has a higher latest lead result than Garden City. If you are unsure which one supplies your house, the name on your water bill decides it.
| System | People | Latest lead |
|---|---|---|
| Clark | 1,148 | 4 ppb |
| Willow Lake | 255 | 1 ppb |
| Fordham Colony | 142 | 0 (not detected) |
| Collins Colony | 95 | 0 (not detected) |
| Shamrock Colony | 75 | 1 ppb |
Your move
Test your own tap with a certified lab first-draw sample; Garden City, SD may offer free or low-cost kits through the utility. If your own line is lead, replacing the private side runs about $1,200-$12,300 (EPA average about $4,700). Ask Garden City whether it covers that cost before hiring anyone - many utilities now do.
These figures describe homes the utility sampled, not your tap. Only your service line record or a test of your own water answers the question for your house. Why sampled homes are the worst-case ones is in the guide to reading the number. Why an old exceedance still matters: over the limit before, under it now.