SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Besides 120 acres of prime downtown real estate, Sioux Falls city leaders got something that has sometimes been elusive over the history of the Smithfield pork plant: An assurance that it's not leaving.

That's also good news for hundreds of farmers in three states that supply the 20,000 hogs slaughtered each day at what is one of the oldest and largest meatpacking plants in the country.

On Feb. 16, South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden, Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken and Smithfield Foods CEO Shane Smith announced that Smithfield's pork processing facility would move out of its century-old campus just north of Falls Park to a new location in an industrial park in northwestern Sioux Falls.

The downtown Sioux Falls site opened as John Morrell & Co. in 1909 and was purchased by Smithfield Foods in 1995.

The plant employs about 3,200 people. It’s Smithfield’s second- largest processing facility and the largest producer of packaged meats in the country. The new facility will be even larger, with an estimated $1.3 billion price tag on 200 acres.

The move, which will be possible in part thanks to a $50 million gift from billionaire Denny Sanford, raises questions for both Sioux Falls and South Dakota residents, especially for those familiar with the company's long history and deep impact in the area.

Not surprisingly, any operation that slaughters thousands of head of livestock every day has an impact on the environment, and the plant has had issues with air and water pollution. Residents of the area are familiar with Smithfield's signature smell, which often wafts across downtown when the wind blows the wrong way.

The new plant will be markedly less smelly, Smithfield representatives said to city council, thanks to air-scrubbing technology that can be housed in a newly constructed facility.

The current site sits directly on the Big Sioux River. The new location will place it about 3 miles away from that waterway and a mile from the nearest tributary, Willow Creek. Smithfield uses an estimated 3 million gallons of water a day, according to Friends of the Big Sioux River.

Under the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, the company must acquire permits for its wastewater discharges and emissions from the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Smithfield has run into compliance issues for those permits in the past.

In 2018, DANR fined Smithfield $55,382 for violations of its discharge permit stemming from a wastewater treatment failure. In 2011, the company was fined $44,000 for numerous permit violations, including ammonia release violations.

The city of Sioux Falls plans a $90 million tax increment financing district for the new campus, which Smithfield said would go toward funding a new wastewater treatment facility.

Travis Entenman, executive director of Friends of the Big Sioux River, told News Watch that while the plant has historically been associated with river quality due to its high levels of wastewater discharge, the facility's move will not likely have a major impact on the river's quality.

'This won't solve all of our river issues in terms of quality. I always hammer on that there's upstream and downstream things we need to be doing to really have a large scale impact,' he said. 'It's just a small drop in the bucket compared to everything that's going into it.'

Theplantworkswithmorethan 500 independent farmers in the region. Emma Davis, a representative for Smithfield Foods, told News Watch in a statement that most of the livestock comes from local farmers.

'The vast majority of hogs we process in Sioux Falls are from independent hog producers in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa,' Davis said.

The plant has long been an economic heavy-hitter: Smithfield said the Sioux Falls facility generated $4.4 million in taxes in 2024 and pays about $200 million in wages yearly. It employs more than 3,200 people in Sioux Falls, making it one of the area's largest employers.

TenHaken said in his speech Feb. 16 that had the company chosen to move out of state rather than stay in Sioux Falls, the state would likely have seen a multibillion- dollar economic loss.

'I don't want to just take for granted that it was assumed that Smithfield would stay here, because it wasn't,' TenHaken said.

South Dakota News Watch is an independent nonprofit. Read, donate and subscribe for free at sdnewswatch.org. Contact reporter and Report for America corps member Molly Wetsch: 605-531-7382/molly.wetsch@sdnewswatch. org.