RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) – Imagine waking up one day to a large sinkhole right outside your house.

For some residents of Hideaway Hills, that’s exactly what happened in April 2020 when a sinkhole formed revealing an abandoned gypsum mine.

Four years later, more than 200 people are involved in a lawsuit against the State of South Dakota and are seeking $60 million in damages.

Since 2020, the sinkhole in the Hideaway Hills neighborhood in Black Hawk has led to anger and fear.

“There’s no guarantee that a sinkhole won’t open under a school bus or somebody’s bedroom or anything else that’s out there. They’re also afraid they’re going to lose their utilities and they’re going to have to move,” said Kathleen Barrow an attorney with Fox Rothschild LLP.

Now, there is a class action lawsuit against the state of South Dakota as more than 200 people are claiming the area to be too dangerous to live in.

“To the degree that there was an incorrect or inadequate reclamation which is certainly one of the things we’re alleging, it can only be attributable to the state,” said Barrow.

There are currently 12 homes in an evacuation zone and a total of 158 homes are threatened due to their foundations having nothing stable to sit on.

Barrow believes more homes will be added to the evacuation zone.

“Every time it rains, you get small collapses and subsidence’s and that affects the structures of the homes,” said Barrow.

She feels empathy for those who have lost their homes because of the sinkhole.

“I wouldn’t know what to do because I wouldn’t have the means to buy another house and just vacate the one I’m in. Not very many of us would, but nobody should be living out there, unfortunately, because you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Barrow.

Barrow says a hearing is expected at some point this summer and a trial is set for damages next spring.

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An anti-abortion group in South Dakota has sued to block an abortion rights measure from the November ballot.

In its complaint filed Thursday, Life Defense Fund alleged various wrongdoing by the measure’s supporters, as well as invalid signatures and fraud. The group seeks to disqualify or invalidate the initiative.

In May, Secretary of State Monae Johnson validated the measure by Dakotans for Health for the Nov. 5 general election ballot. The measure’s supporters had submitted about 54,000 signatures to qualify the ballot initiative. They needed about 35,000 signatures. Johnson’s office deemed about 85% of signatures as valid, based on a random sample.

Life Defense Fund alleged Dakotans for Health didn’t file a required affidavit for petition circulators’ residency, and that petitioners didn’t always provide a required circulator handout and left petition sheets unattended. Life Defense Fund also objected to numerous more signatures as invalid, and alleged petitioners misled people as to what they were signing.

“The public should scrutinize Dakotan for Health’s comments and carefully consider its credibility. In the end, the Court will determine whether such unlawful conduct may result in the measure being included on the ballot,” Life Defense Fund attorney Sara Frankenstein said in an email Monday.

Dakotans for Health called Life Defense Fund’s lawsuit “a last-ditch effort to undermine the democratic process.”

“They have thrown everything they could, and now the kitchen sink, to stop the voters from weighing in this November. We are confident that the people of South Dakota are going to be able to make this decision, not the politicians, come this November,” co-founder Rick Weiland said in a statement Friday.

The measure would bar the state from regulating “a pregnant woman’s abortion decision and its effectuation” in the first trimester, but it would allow second-trimester regulations “only in ways that are reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.”

The constitutional amendment would allow the state to regulate or prohibit abortion in the third trimester, “except when abortion is necessary, in the medical judgment of the woman’s physician, to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman.”

South Dakota outlaws abortion as a felony crime, except to save the life of the mother, under a trigger law that took effect in 2022 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade.

The measure drew opposition from South Dakota’s Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this year. The Legislature approved a resolution officially opposing the measure, and it passed a law allowing petition signers to withdraw their signatures from initiative petitions. The latter is not expected to affect the measure going before voters.

Life Defense Fund is also seeking to ban Dakotans for Health and its workers from sponsoring or circulating petitions or doing ballot initiative committee work for four years.

South Dakota is one of four states – along with Colorado, Florida and Maryland – where measures to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution will come before voters in November. There are petition drives to add similar questions in seven more states.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the nationwide right to abortion two years ago, there have been seven statewide abortion-related ballot measures, and abortion rights advocates have prevailed on all of them.

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Dura reported from Bismarck, North Dakota. Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill contributed to this story from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The Sioux Falls Canaries were unable to overcome 17 runners left on base during an 11-7 loss at the hands of Fargo-Moorhead on Sunday.

The RedHawks scored three runs in the first inning but the Birds answered with two in the second as Wyatt Ulrich delivered an RBI single and Mike Hart drew a bases loaded walk. Sioux Falls tied the game on an RBI sacrifice fly from Liam Spence an inning later.

Fargo-Moorhead added two more runs in the fifth before Spence Sarringar responded with an RBI double in home half. The RedHawks, though, struck for four runs in the sixth inning to build their largest lead at 9-4.

The Canaries got back into the game with three runs in the bottom half. Hunter Clanin drove in two with a double and Spence added an RBI single. But Fargo-Moorhead held Sioux Falls scoreless the rest of the way while adding two more runs in the ninth to clinch the three-game divisional series.

Clanin finished with three hits while Sarringar, Josh Rehwaldt and Kendall Foster each added two. The Canaries are now 19-13 and welcome Chicago for a three-game series that begins Tuesday at 6:35pm.

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