For a closer look select the link and explore the Oil and Gas layers available.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/OaGIMS/viewer.htm
Sunday, March 23, 2014
The current state of Oil and Gas development in the Killdeer Mountain Battlefield study area
For a closer look select the link and explore the Oil and Gas layers available.
https://www.dmr.nd.gov/OaGIMS/viewer.htm
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Dunn County says battlefield study too big
Dunn County says battlefield study too big
KILLDEER, N.D. — The Dunn County Commission said it can't support a study of the Killdeer Mountain Battlefield in its present wide-angled scope, but left the door open for one on a smaller scale.
The study under the National Park Service's American Battlefield Protection Program sets out a 17,000-acre area to be investigated for how and where the Civil War-era battle occurred. The study is being conducted now and over the next 18 months by the North Dakota State University Center for Heritage Renewal.
Dunn County Commissioner Daryl Dukart said he made the motion Wednesday to get the county in front of any potential impact to its ability to develop roads or do other public work in the study area.
Center Director Tom Isern said the county's alarm is "quite unwarranted." He said the study will only provide a detailed scholarly accounting of "what happened and where. That's it."
Whether the battlefield area or some portion of it was to be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places would be up to the National Park Service and only with support from private landowners, Isern said.
He said the Killdeer Mountain engagement of Plains Indians and the U.S. Army in 1864 was the largest military engagement on the Northern Plains. The National Park Service protection program has listed it as the era's most at-risk battlefield, mainly because of encroaching oil development.
The study is already funded and underway, and Isern said the county's support or lack of it is not necessary to its success.
Dukart said the county's action didn’t close the door to future considerations. "Tom (Isern's) got a right to defend what he's done … but don't try to propose 17,000 acres. I'm not against a very much smaller version of this," he said.
Isern said the battlefield study has become entangled with Basin Electric Power Cooperative's plans to build a new 345-kilovolt transmission line through the battlefield study area.
The planned line from Basin's Antelope Valley Station near Beulah to the oil patch region is under environmental review by the federal Rural Utilities Service and the state Public Service Commission.
Isern said Killdeer Mountain landowners who oppose the study already have been paid for transmission line easements.
Basin has said it is out its easement investment if the route through the battlefield is rejected.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Dunn County opposes Killdeer battlefield study; landowner accuses NDSU professor of incorrectly filling out grant
Published March 20, 2014, 09:08 PM
Dunn County opposes Killdeer battlefield study; landowner accuses NDSU professor of incorrectly filling out grant
MANNING, N.D. – The Dunn County Commission does not support North Dakota State University’s Killdeer Mountain battlefield study as presented.
By: Katherine Lymn, Forum News Service, INFORUM
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Letter: Federal laws have effect on North Dakota power line
Letter: Federal laws have effect on North Dakota power line
Like many North Dakotans, we too would like to know who knew what and when about the extent and importance of the Killdeer Mountain Battlefield as this information relates to Basin Electric’s proposed Antelope Valley-to- Neset transmission line.
By: G. Edward Dickey, Dickinson, N.D., INFORUM
Industrial Commission: North Dakota will be an Energy Sacrifice Zone
Industrial Commission: North Dakota will be an Energy Sacrifice Zone
I am by nature an optimist. But for the moment I am really deeply saddened to see the Industrial Commission throw its immense weight (as usual) behind the dynamics of wholesale development—drill, baby, drill—rather than take measured risks on behalf of the commonwealth values of North Dakota. The Industrial Commission has a constitutionally-mandated responsibility to create broad policy protocols for economic activity in North Dakota. In other words, the state government of North Dakota has the right and responsibility to set the terms of industrial engagement as we strip our countryside of its immense oil shale reserves. If Gov. Dalrymple and Ag Commissioner Doug Goehring had voted to adopt Attorney General Stenehjem’s proposal as he originally presented it, the oil industry and “landowner groups” would have howled, but they would have soon found a way to work with the new protocols, which would have affected only a tiny fraction of the oil properties in North Dakota. Even in its original form, the Initiative would not have prevented a single barrel of oil from being extracted from beneath our soil.
So what’s left after last week’s vote? A list of special places—still a very good thing, in my opinion, because the State of North Dakota has now gone on record as believing that there really are some extraordinary places worthy of special care. James Madison resisted the Bill of Rights at first (1787) because he thought it would be a mere “parchment guarantee.” He was wrong. The Bill of Rights has become a fundamental baseline American text around which we the people can rally when our natural rights are jeopardized. Think of the power of “invoking the fifth,” or demanding respect for “my first amendment rights” (or second). The Special Places List of 2014 gives the people who love the landscape of western North Dakota official permission to rally around more than a dozen extraordinarily beautiful and fragile places that need and deserve advocates.
The effective collapse of the Special Places initiative points to a deep problem of North Dakota life. If the Special Places were Mount Rushmore, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone Falls, Monument Valley, Devils Tower, Half Dome, Mount Rainier, or Lake Tahoe, I believe even a pro-development Industrial Commission would find ways to protect their sanctity by setting special conditions for industrial activity on adjacent private properties. If our Special Places were as obviously spectacular as the ones listed above, the people of North Dakota (and throughout the United States) would be their champions and clamor for their protection. The simple truth is that most North Dakotans have never seen the Killdeer Mountains or Pretty Butte or even Little Missouri State Park. Most North Dakotans live well east of Bismarck (the 100th Meridian), and the closer you get to the Red River Valley, where the bulk of our population lives, the more North Dakotans lean into Minnesota. They look east not west. Their idea of a special place is Detroit Lakes.
North Dakota’s Special Places are not sublime in the Grand Teton sense of the term. Probably only a few dozen North Dakotans have been to all 18 of them. Most North Dakotans will acknowledge that the Badlands are pretty, but when they say “Badlands,” most North Dakotans are referencing what you see from the Painted Canyon overlook off Interstate 94, what you see from the Burning Hills Amphitheater, or (a couple of times in a lifetime) along the loop road in the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Most North Dakotans have never been to Bullion Butte and only a few thousand have every climbed it. White Butte, the highest point in North Dakota, at 3,506 feet, is hard to pinpoint as you hurtle along US 85 between Belfield and Bowman. It’s not even as impressive as its more traditional cousin Black Butte (on the other side of the highway), and it generally gets talked about by way of a flatlander’s smirk.
We North Dakotans undervalue the beauty of our landscapes, including our public lands. We compare our landscapes unfavorably with those of Colorado, Utah, and Montana, or the woods and lake country of Minnesota. For most of North Dakota’s policy makers, by which I mean the Industrial Commissioners, the state’s regulatory bureaucrats, and most members of the state legislature, the lands in question are something of an abstraction. The attitude of most North Dakotans is that there is not much special here, that the country west of the Missouri River is a vast and largely bleak empty quarter that should be damned grateful that it now finally has found a way to attract economic development. Matthew 6:1: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
I sincerely wonder how many of the Special Places our three Industrial Commissioners have visited. I don’t mean by flying over them in a plane or helicopter or driving past them en route to somewhere else in suit and tie. I mean get out of the car and spend some time in hiking boots. I know that Wayne Stenehjem ventured quietly to Bullion Butte when it became an issue before the Industrial Commission a year or so ago. That seems to me to be exemplary leadership. I wish the three commissioners would take a weeklong Special Places vacation, with no media and no neckties, camp out on the ground (no RVs) at Pretty Butte north of Marmarth, and climb White Butte on a hot July afternoon, to watch the thunderheads gather and rumble in from the west. I’d want them to have a picnic of baguettes and cheese within the perimeter of Theodore Roosevelt’s cabin site at the Elkhorn Ranch. Month after month the Industrial Commission sits in judgment of the future of North Dakota and yet they have been making profound decisions about places they know mostly from maps.
I hope everyone who is reading these words will go visit the Special Places between Easter and first snowfall. If you contact me (see below) I will give you tips about how to sequence your visit, and which ones you can legally climb. We need to build a broad protective constituency for the subtle magnificence of western North Dakota. Until you have been to the Elkhorn Ranch (no climbing required), you cannot, in my opinion, quite realize how much is at stake as we frack North Dakota.
(Clay Jenkinson is the Theodore Roosevelt Center scholar at Dickinson State University, as well as Distinguished Scholar of the Humanities at Bismarck State College and director of the Dakota Institute. Clay can be reached at Jeffysage@aol.com or through his website, Jeffersonhour.org.)
Thursday, March 6, 2014
PAUL SUKUT: Co-op takes care to protect battlefield
PAUL SUKUT: Co-op takes care to protect battlefield
BISMARCK — The Forum News Service story, “Professor claims historic value of power line path purposely ignored,” contains bold assertions by Tom Isern, historian-director of the Center for Cultural Heritage Renewal at North Dakota State University (Page C6, Feb. 9).
The story refers to Basin Electric’s proposed Antelope Valley Station-Neset transmission line, which would extend west from the Antelope Valley Station near Beulah, N.D., to Tioga, N.D.
The 278-mile line will address the significant demand for electricity in northwest North Dakota and improve reliability of the existing system, ultimately strengthening the infrastructure throughout the region.
Basin is a not-for-profit wholesale generation and transmission cooperative, which serves member cooperatives in the region. Those co-ops are on the front lines, working around the clock to serve this tremendous growth. As their power supplier, we have an obligation to serve our members, who in turn serve their consumers, whether they are residential, commercial or industrial.
At issue is the location of the line, which crosses an area that NDSU received a grant from the National Park Service to evaluate as a potential historical site in which a battle between the U.S. military and the Plains Indians took place in 1864.
While Basin was not made aware of this study until late August 2013, two years after work to site the line commenced, Kimball Banks of Metcalf Archaeological Consultants said a 2010 National Park Service report highlighting the battlefield’s importance and eligibility for preservation obligates him to conclude that the site already meets the criteria for preservation.
Banks’ responsibility was to identify areas within the line route that met criteria for being classified as avoidance or exclusion areas, including areas of cultural protection. With undefined and subjective boundaries, the proposed, expanded battlefield area did not, and still does not, meet requirements of Class 1 protection status.
Significant work, consideration and evaluation went into route selection. One of our first steps was to gather existing information from federal and state agencies. The search covered cultural, biological, socio-economics, land use information and other issues. Agencies responsible for managing their respective area of jurisdiction were contacted to identify areas of concern or special requirements a project may have to evaluate.
Additionally, Basin worked with 512 landowners resulting in more than 10,000 landowner contracts to determine support and input for the line location. We have a long history of solid relationships with our landowners and have great support for this project.
Throughout this time, Basin maintained close contact with members of the public and state, county and federal agencies, including the National Park Service. There were scoping meetings for agencies and members of the public and also a draft Environmental Impact Statement was issued and underwent a comment period and hearing.
At no time during these processes did any member of the public, state or federal agency bring up the battlefield study, much less request the area be avoided.
But since Basin became aware of this study area in August 2013, we have taken steps to preserve the history of the area, agreeing to the Historical Society of North Dakota’s request to move a proposed substation and committing to additional survey work to ensure no battlefield-related resources are directly impacted.
The story highlights a $1.3 million pledge from Touchstone Energy Cooperatives announced in 2008. Partnering in this donation is Basin Electric, the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives and some member-cooperatives.
One of the cooperative core principles is “Commitment to Community,” and we take seriously our support of community efforts to preserve history and help those in need. Our donation to the Heritage Center is one of many contributions we make in North Dakota and other states.
Isern’s assertion that the donation “might have muzzled the State Historical Society of North Dakota” indicates his lack of understanding of electric cooperatives, our values and integrity. Furthermore, it directly discredits the mission of the Historical Society with his absurd allegations that they can be bought off.
Basin Electric recognizes this situation respects all opinions and is working with regulating agencies to mitigate impacts, but we also need to meet our obligation to deliver power to our member-owners. While there is no doubt the landscape in northwest North Dakota has changed, our responsibility lies in serving our members with electricity, which is a lifeline. No one wins if the lights go out.
Sukut is interim CEO and general manager of Basin Electric Power Cooperative.
Killdeer Mt. study needed local participation
Killdeer Mt. study needed local participation
In recent news reports, North Dakota State University professor Tom Isern stated, in so many words, that the State Historical Preservation Office has not gone the extra mile and taken the lead in protecting and preserving the 17,340 acres in his proposed study of the Killdeer Mountain battlefield area.
More than 16,000 of those acres are privately owned. We commend Fern Swenson, North Dakota’s deputy historic preservation director, for her comments acknowledging that protecting and preserving privately owned and held land is not within the mission or the jurisdiction of the State Historical Preservation Office. For the office to step outside of that would be both negligent and remiss on its part. The State Historical Society of North Dakota owns the one-acre Killdeer Battlefield State Historic Site and that is all it is obligated to protect and preserve.
Furthermore, the proposed power line route does not even cross the Battlefield State Historic Site — the site is three-quarters of a mile north of the proposed route.
Isern stated publicly that “shoddy” and incomplete work has been done deliberately. However, following our thorough review of Isern’s grant application to the National Park Service to study the Killdeer Battlefield, it was very apparent that Isern’s claims of “shoddy” and incomplete work most accurately describe the quality of his own grant application.
The stated objective of his grant request is to “begin the National Register nomination process,” a designation that requires landowner acceptance and approval. Our examination of Isern’s grant application reveals:
-- The grant process requires public meetings to inform landowners and the public of the study, but to date no informational meetings have occurred. Landowners owning 95 percent of the proposed study area are entitled to information on it and what restrictions the federal designation on the National Register of Historic Places would place on landowners’ use of their private property.
-- The application does not list all the private landowners in the proposed study area, contrary to the National Park Service’s grant requirement to list all landowners “in the project area whose property is involved in the project.” In fact, our names, along with 24 others, are not even listed.
-- The Park Service grant application states: “Also attach letters from each land owner (emphasis added) whose property requires access for this grant giving the applicant permission to undertake work on their property.” Isern’s application contains only one letter of support, from the Killdeer Mountain Alliance, representing two landowners who own 260 acres of the proposed 17,340-acre study area.
-- Isern states in his grant application that participation of the Killdeer Mountain Alliance as well as the presence of state land “will provide sufficient access to complete the goals of this project.” The state of North Dakota owns 991.5 acres in the proposed study area. Taken together with the 260 acres listed above, Isern is claiming that a combined total of 1,252 acres — a mere 7.2 percent of the total proposed study area — is “sufficient access” to complete the study. In contrast, Basin Electric contacted all landowners at the very beginning of its process (for obtaining right of way for a transmission line).
It is important that the public is aware that Isern deliberately chose to seek his funding first without ever consulting those people whose private property he wished to involve in the proposed study. In a conversation with Isern, he stated that he “doesn’t feel there is a need to bring the landowners on board until the second year of the study, when he would have need of our property.” Based upon what we have observed, experienced and read throughout this entire debacle, it is our belief that there is unquestionable deception by Isern, The Center for Heritage Renewal and The Killdeer Mountain Alliance.
Because Isern is a member of the North Dakota State University faculty, the citizens and taxpayers of North Dakota should be asking why such behavior is allowed to continue under the umbrella of the university system. It seems fitting that a response from Dean Bresciani, president of NDSU, or Larry Skogen, chancellor of the North Dakota University System, is in order. Remember, gentlemen, the landowners of North Dakota will judge you by your actions — and the company you keep.
Since 1929, and long before any studies were proposed, the Dvirnak family has worked diligently to protect our land and the site of the Battle of the Killdeer Mountains. This has been our choice — one we have been proud and privileged to undertake and one that we intend to continue on our privately-owned land.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Private land removed from special places proposal
Private land removed from special places proposal
A proposal to protect places deemed special or extraordinary from energy development was changed to exclude private land before it was unanimously approved Monday by the North Dakota Industrial Commission.
The approval follows a monthlong public comment period that resulted in more than 500 comments. Gov. Jack Dalrymple proposed an amendment at the beginning of Monday's hearing that removed references to private land.
Dalrymple said the policy is “the right thing to do,” but “when it comes to private property … I don’t think we should include that at this time.”
The governor said he also agreed with lawmakers who questioned the Industrial Commission’s authority to set policy on private landowners’ rights. He said the issue should be revisited at the end of the year and the Legislature should become involved in the conversation next year during its session.
Supporters of the policy in its unamended form said what passed Monday lacked teeth. Approximately half of the more than 1.2 million acres of land affected by the policy is private land and is interlaced with public lands in some areas.
“It’s a checkerboard throughout the Badlands,” said Valerie Naylor, superintendent of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. “It’s very important that we include all of those places.”
The Department of Mineral Resources plans to create an updated map showing where the public land affected by the policy is located.
The policy includes a list of 18 places recognized for special protection for reasons including historical and cultural value. Among them are Lake Sakakawea, Elkhorn Ranch and the Killdeer Mountain Battlefield State Historical Site.
The policy calls for buffer zones from one-half mile to a maximum of two miles and would require an extensive mitigation plan by producers looking to drill in those areas.
It also calls for a person designated to gather comment and validate concerns raised on proposals to drill in sensitive areas and report back to the Industrial Commission and the Department of Mineral Resources.
The primary argument made by policy opponents had been that it would infringe on private property owners’ rights to develop their land.
Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said he had grave concerns over private property rights ever since Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem unveiled the proposal in December.
Before Dalrymple’s amendment, Gehring said, he had been prepared to come into the meeting and propose striking a large portion of the policy’s language relating to public comment, to preserve private property rights. He said Dalrymple’s amendment was a reasonable compromise.
“I can live with this. It’s workable and we can avoid any unintended consequences,” Goehring said.
Wayde Schafer, a spokesman for the Sierra Club of North Dakota, was disappointed in Monday’s vote.
“I think we just witnessed a lack of leadership on the governor’s part,” Schafer said.
Schafer said a narrow window exists to preserve North Dakota’s most pristine landscapes and Monday’s decision was a missed opportunity.
North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness called the decision “a prudent step to take” that preserved private property rights.
Ness pointed to the comments submitted by officials in western North Dakota counties citing concerns about private landowner rights. He said the Industrial Commission also made the right decision in not deciding policy on private lands and leaving it open to potential legislative discussion.
“Anything could come up during the session,” Ness said.
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