Environmentalists react to protected site list

The state has compiled a list of sites it might review for protections from drilling, and while environmentalists say it’s a good start, they caution that it’s not nearly enough.

By: Katherine Lymn, The Dickinson Press

Published August 17, 2013, 12:00 AM

Press Photo by Dustin Monke Oil wells that are tucked into a hillside pump as natural gas is flared along Highway 22 north of Killdeer on June 6 near the Little Missouri State Primative Park site. Environmentalists are asking that the North Dakota Industrial Commission visit sites like the park that they want to see protected from oil and energy development.

Alliance fighting for Killdeer Mountain

The state has compiled a list of sites it might review for protections from drilling, and while environmentalists say it’s a good start, they caution that it’s not nearly enough.
The list of about 40 wildlife management areas, buttes and other significant sites is a tentative selection of where North Dakota’s governor, attorney general and agriculture commissioner, who make up the state’s Industrial Commission, may tour and then consider preserving.
But the list represents how little is left of North Dakota wilderness for Wayde Schafer, organizer of the state’s Sierra Club.
“It’s gotten to the point where they’re all special because it’s all that’s left,” he said.
Representatives from the offices of each commission member didn’t know of much touring the members had done and didn’t know their plans for the future. The Industrial Commission wants to finish the visits by winter.
Many of the list sites were on a preservation proposal from Schafer’s club back in the ’90s. Half of those proposal sites have since seen energy development.
Now the window of opportunity to protect enough Badlands to have a quality wildlife experience is closing, he says, and people are realizing what they’re losing.
“Everybody becomes an environmentalist when their backyard is threatened,” Schafer said, “and that’s what’s happening.”
Badlands Conservation Alliance President and state Sen. Connie Triplett said she thinks the initiative is just a result of public pressure, but she’s glad the state responded.
Still, she said, broader regulations are necessary for all drilling applications on state school lands.
“The notion of just picking a few selected sites is a really short-sighted way to think about this,” said Triplett, a Democrat from Grand Forks.
Alison Ritter, spokeswoman for the Industrial Commission’s Oil and Gas Division, said the commission has maps to compare proposed drill sites with any restricted areas, and it also posts approved permits online for three days of public comment before operators can build.
Triplett and others say they’re also interested in how the list is used, not just what’s on it.
If the Industrial Commission doesn’t actually use the list to inform its decision-making, she said, “it will have been a waste of time.”
Karlene Fine, executive director of the Industrial Commission, said the list is nearly complete but that the commission members are “always open for suggestions.”
Multiple environmentalists said the list is missing significant sites, like wildlife management areas and wildlife refuges in the Oil Patch.
Triplett said she has asked Fine for the original list of citizen suggestions, and for a description of how the Industrial Commission narrowed it down if it did.
The environmentalists say they don’t want to stop drilling — they just want the state to be more mindful about where it’s allowed.
“It’s about making sure that enough voices are heard so that the drilling takes place in a way that doesn’t damage other values that many people care about,” Triplett said.
She said “no-surface occupancy,” noise-reducing equipment and shifting site locations are some ways for developers and land advocates to compromise.
Commission member Gov. Jack Dalrymple has said horizontal drilling can help to avoid sensitive drilling areas.
The governor’s trips are going to be informal visits, spokesman Jeff Zent said.
“(Dalrymple) wants to go out there just to see these sites for himself and to cover all bases,” Zent said.
Environmentalists, like blogger and longtime North Dakota outdoors activist Jim Fuglie, say the state is so far behind with protecting its lands that the list is just not enough.
“The oil’s not going anywhere but there’s just so much money to be made that everybody wants to get it now and that’s the problem,” he said.
“It wouldn’t hurt to slow things down a little bit.”
Triplett, meanwhile, says the list is “better late than never.”

http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/article/id/71221/

Alliance wants a second look

August 15, 2013

JILL SCHRAMM - Staff Writer (jschramm@minotdailynews.com) , Minot Daily News

KILLDEER An alliance working to protect the environment and history of the Killdeer Mountains wants the North Dakota Industrial Commission to reconsider how oil is being tapped in the area.

The Killdeer Mountain Alliance has asked members of the commission Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring and Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem to include the Killdeer Mountains on a proposed tour of culturally important sites.

The alliance includes landowners, former residents, historians, Native Americans, archeologists, wildlife biologists, hunters and others.

The alliance also is asking the commission to delay any further drilling on public land set aside as "school land" on the west side of the Killdeers until considering its alternative drilling plan. That plan would access the same oil from a different location, which would require three miles of horizontal drilling but would be safer and less archaeologically damaging, according to the group.

"I would like to specifically show them, on the ground, the alternative we are suggesting and how that would help," said Rob Sand, coordinator of the alliance. "It's public land that has been enjoyed for ages by hunters, by lease holders, by cattle, by just sight-seers," he said. "Native Americans have taken quite an interest in this whole issue because they have held this as a sacred ground."

Jeff Zent, spokesman in Gov. Jack Dalrymple's office, said Industrial Commission members have not been able to coordinate their schedules for a joint tour of culturally sensitive sites but will be touring individually. They are open to looking at possible new approaches to drilling, he said.

Alison Ritter, public information specialist with the Department of Mineral Resources, said Lynn Helms, the department director, is expected to be involved in the tours but the locations to be included have yet to be determined.

"It's still pretty early in the planning stages," she said.

Hess Corp. holds the lease on the land where the alliance is proposing the alternative drilling. Last January, the Industrial Commission approved drilling for eight new wells, and Sand said two wells have been drilled so far. The location is on the west tip of the Killdeer Mountains, northwest of Killdeer.

The existing wells are on the southwest side of the school section. A second pad on the southeast end for four more wells is on land that is untilled, rich in history and likely archeologically significant, the alliance informed Industrial Commission members in a letter earlier this month.

The site is believed to be part of a historical Native American battleground that may provide archeological findings. The alliance reported that the lack of an archeological survey was a factor in its inability to persuade the commission against allowing drilling in the area. Now North Dakota State University in Fargo has funding to conduct a survey, which is another reason to postpone drilling, according to the alliance.

Although not opposed to oil development on private and public land, Sand said, the alliance wants development conducted in as environmentally friendly a manner as possible.

"Most people in this state look at the Killdeer Mountains, I believe, as a scenic place that they want to enjoy as unspoiled as possible," he said.

http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/577522/Alliance-wants-a-second-look.html?nav=5010

Important Cultural, Religious and Historical Resources Threatened by Drilling

(Courtesy Dakota Goodhouse/TheFirstScout.blogspot.com)

Killdeer Mountain, home of the Singing Butte, looms on the edge of the North Dakota Badlands. (Courtesy Dakota Goodhouse/TheFirstScout.blogspot.com)

Important Cultural, Religious and Historical Resources

Threatened by Drilling

Tanya Lee

April 08, 2013

The Hess Corporation’s development of oil resources on Taĥċa Wakutėpi (Killdeer Mountain) on the edge of the North Dakota badlands threatens to destroy the integrity of a site sacred to tribes and important to historians, wildlife biologists, archaeologists and local landowners.
In a June 2010 report on the preservation of North Dakota battlefields, the National Park Service wrote, “Each of North Dakota’s battlefields remains a good candidate for comprehensive preservation, but Killdeer Mountain is most at-risk. While exploratory oil well drilling has had little effect on the battlefield’s condition so far, industrial scale extraction of the sub-surface resources at Killdeer Mountain could destroy the landscape and associated view-sheds in the near future.”

Killdeer Mountain was the site of an attack by U.S. Army Brigadier General Alfred Sully against a traditional summer gathering of American Indians for trading, socializing and ceremonies. On July 28 and 29, 1864, the general’s troops killed an estimated 150 Dakota and Lakota warriors and executed uncounted women and children. They destroyed as many as 1,800 lodges, 200 tons of buffalo meat and dried berries, clothes and household utensils, tipi poles, travois, and piles of tanned hides and slaughtered horses and perhaps 3,000 dogs. It was the final significant battle in the Dakota-U.S. War of 1862, but its deliberate brutality led to other conflicts. Among the survivors of the Battle of Killdeer Mountain were Sitting Bull and his lieutenant, Gall, who would fight again at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.

The mountain was a sacred site long before the battle. Dakota Goodhouse, an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, says, “Killdeer Mountain is a place people still go to pray, [and there are] still people at Fort Berthold who visit the site for vision quests.”

Gerard Baker, an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes and a former National Park Service superintendant, is 59. As a child, he learned the ceremonial importance of Taĥċa Wakutėpi from his father, who learned it from tribal elders. “He told us the stories of Singing Butte, where Earth-naming ceremonies once took place. Many of the ceremonies are lost because of time, but they are still extremely important. Medicine Hole is associated with lost ceremonies. Many were lost during the smallpox epidemic of 1837.” Baker explains that unless a ceremony’s owner sells or gives away the ceremony before he dies, it can no longer be performed. So many Indians died so quickly during the smallpox epidemic that they did not have time to ensure the survival of their ceremonies.

Sioux leader Sitting Bull, left, and Hunkpapa Chief Gall survived the Battle of Killdeer Mountain. (AP; Courtesy National Archives)

But the spirits still live on Singing Butte. “The spirits live in different areas throughout the Dakotas in various buttes from Canada to the South Dakota line. The Hidatsa consider that their ancestral territory,” says Baker. Other lifeways that once took place on Killdeer Mountain included burials, fasting, trapping to get eagle feathers, deer-hunting and dressing.

A fundamental problem—and one of the challenges in opposing oil drilling on the mountain—says Baker, is that “not enough people know about the ceremonies. Even though people know the site is sacred, not so many know about the ceremonies.” He has a very pragmatic approach to dealing with Hess’s current oil drilling proposals. “I wish we could say ‘No drilling,’ but that’s not going to happen. They’re going to get that oil one way or the other.… We could hold up protest signs, but I think education would work better,” says Goodhouse. “I feel the issue is people don’t care because they don’t know” about Killdeer Mountain’s cultural or historical significance. “In an ideal world, there would be no wells near that area, but I have to be a realist. My suggestion is to drill laterally” for four miles, instead of the two miles of lateral drilling Hess is planning.

Opponents have won two concessions. “They have agreed that if they come across artifacts they will cease operations. But I know from experience that road companies do not stop development to save what’s there. They call in salvage archaeologists to survey,” says Goodhouse.

Richard Rothaus, president of Trefoil Cultural and Environmental, an archaeological consulting firm, had been planning to look at the Killdeer battlefield in 2014 or 2015, but when he heard about the imminent oil drilling there, he got permission to do a quick surface survey. He found three sites, two of them major. “This is an area that could have good, important information about the battle. It would be a shame to see it torn up without some work.”

Rothaus says he would need one excavation season, roughly one summer, to do 80 percent of the archaeological work that needs to be done at the battlefield. He has applied for funding for the work to the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program and will know in July whether the money will come through.

According to Rothaus, “Oil development is growing so fast out there that no one can keep track of it. People didn’t know this was being leased,” so they couldn’t do the archaeological work earlier. “Hess says it avoided the battlefield, but is 2.5 miles away from the historical marker for the battlefield, not three miles away from the battlefield.” The marker, he says, occupies just a couple of square feet of the vast battlefield. The wells Hess proposes are within the battlefield area.

The current situation on Killdeer Mountain, says Rothaus, came about through “a series of fairly innocent mistakes. I’ve almost never encountered anyone who doesn’t care about this history, but the right people are not at the table.”

Anne Marguerite Coyle, assistant professor of biology at Jamestown College in Jamestown, North Dakota, who spent three years studying golden eagles on Killdeer Mountain, concurs with Rothaus. “People don’t know when a plot of land might come up for lease.” The North Dakota Industrial Commission, she says, has no obligation to call other state agencies when they are planning to sell oil and gas leases.

Hess has agreed to a second concession, says Goodhouse. “The community did not want wells to be drilled during the school year because of the increased traffic, so they agreed to drill them in July.” But this concession brings its own problems. “The time they are going to put in the wells conflicts

Sully led the 1864 assault on a summer gathering of tribes at Killdeer. (Joel Emmons Whitney)

with religious pilgrimages to area. If someone went to pray up there this summer, drilling would have an adverse effect, based on the impacts I saw of drilling at Bear Butte. There the development is five to 10 miles away from the sacred site. The dirt roads there were expanded to accommodate additional traffic. The traffic is heavy, loud and constant—not conducive to a vision quest.”

Goodhouse says a January meeting between the Mineral Resources Department and those with concerns about the drilling was “very civil, very cordial,” but whether education and goodwill can lead to other compromises is doubtful. Hess responded to a request to ICTMN’s request for an interview via e-mail: “Throughout the regulatory process, members of the community have had an opportunity to raise their concerns with the North Dakota Industrial Commission. We believe that the commission remains the best forum for concerns to be raised and addressed.”

Loren Jepson, a landowner on Killdeer Mountain, cattle rancher and former Hess employee, did raise the issue with the commission when he filed a petition in February asking the commission to suspend its order to allow the drilling and to rehear the case. The commission denied Jepson’s petition on February 20. One argument he made—in keeping with his intent to slow down the process in order to allow more time for study and compromise—was that the commission “failed to consider the best alternative of drilling the requested wells,” referring to the concept that the wells could be started further away from the battlefield. The commission found: “What Jepson has characterized as the failure to consider ‘the best alternative’ does not constitute grounds for rehearing or reconsideration.” In order to reopen the case, says Alison Ritter, spokeswoman for the commission’s Division of Mineral Resources, new information would have to be brought forward. “The commission carefully weighed the evidence,” she says, and the case has already been reopened once, last fall, which does not happen often.

Hess began preliminary work on the site one-quarter mile from Jepson’s house on February 21. He says an archaeologist is on site, but since the work moves so quickly and so much is destroyed in the process, it was unlikely anything would be found, an assessment Rothaus confirms. “Monitoring is just the last safeguard, not where you would want to start an archaeological investigation.”

Ritter explains that Jepson has run through his options at the executive level of the North Dakota state government and his next move would be to file an appeal in district court. Jepson says he does not know whether he will appeal. His attorney has told him that he would need $20,000 just to begin the process.

“I’m 60 years old,” Jepson says. “There are 30 [oil] wells here now and there will be 90 before the end of summer. I will never see the end of this. A way of life is gone, and it won’t come back.”

Read more athttp://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/04/08/important-cultural-religious-and-historical-resources-threatened-drilling-148622

Saving Killdeer Mountain: Varied interests out to protect potential oil site

Sunday, January, 20, 2013 

Saving Killdeer Mountain: Varied interests out to protect potential oil site

KILLDEER — An area of Killdeer Mountain proposed for oil development has rich archeological resources with potential to be added to the National Register of Historic Places, said an archeologist who visited the area.

By: Amy Dalrymple, Forum News Service

KILLDEER — An area of Killdeer Mountain proposed for oil development has rich archeological resources with potential to be added to the National Register of Historic Places, said an archeologist who visited the area.

Archeologist Richard Rothaus took a preliminary survey of a section of state land where Hess Corp. proposes drilling up to eight oil wells and found numerous artifacts that may be related to the Battle of Killdeer Mountain.

Rothaus, along with a diverse group of landowners, Native Americans, hunters, historians and others, are urging the North Dakota Industrial Commission to preserve the section of land about 45 miles north of Dickinson, which is owned by the North Dakota Department of Trust Lands. The commission is scheduled to act on Hess’ permit request on Thursday.

“It’s a type of natural resource. It doesn’t make money like oil does, but it’s something that’s of value to the local citizens, to the Native community,” Rothaus said.

A recently formed group called the Killdeer Mountain Alliance suggests that Hess position its wells further south and drill four miles horizontally to access the minerals.

“This whole area is a state treasure,” said Rob Sand, a landowner in the area and member of the alliance. “We should do what we can to keep it from turning into an industrial area.”

But the alliance’s suggestion is not a technique being used in North Dakota currently, said Alison Ritter, spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Mineral Resources.

Typical Bakken wells are drilled two miles down and two miles horizontally. The state has two wells that have been drilled three mile horizontally near Lake Sakakawea, Ritter said.

No companies are drilling four miles horizontally in the state, which would require a rig capable of drilling to a total depth of six miles.

In a statement, a Hess spokesperson said the company is committed to meeting the highest standards of corporate citizenship and seeks to minimize the company’s impact on the environment.

“We are aware of the concerns and have made every attempt to address the issues raised with regard to our drilling program,” the statement read. “We design every well taking into the specific environmental considerations for that location.”

Lynn Helms, director of the Department of Mineral Resources, will make a recommendation to the Industrial Commission during its meeting on Thursday.

The issue was initially going to be on December’s agenda, but pushed back to allow more time to review the numerous comments submitted, Ritter said.

“There are so many interests that we have to look out for: surface owners, mineral owners, oil and gas operators,” Ritter said. “We have all these different parties that we have to protect. Every piece of this case has been gone over immensely.”

The Industrial Commission consists of Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem and Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring.

Anne Marguerite Coyle, a Jamestown College biology professor who did a study of golden eagles in the Killdeer area, is serving as a liaison for the groups who oppose the drilling proposal. A diverse group of people from neighboring landowners to hunters to Native Americans to biologists and others plan to attend Thursday’s meeting to show their opposition, Coyle said.

“We’re not against development, we’re against irresponsible and greed-driven development,” Coyle said.

Killdeer Public Schools Superintendent Gary Wilz was among the many people who wrote a letter expressing concerns about the proposal. Wilz asked the Industrial Commission to consider finding an alternate route to access the proposed wells because the additional traffic would make an already “precarious and worrisome bus stop” more hazardous.

There is oil development nearby, including some on the mountain, on privately owned land.

Rothaus, a Sauk Rapids, Minn., archeologist who owns consultant firm Trefoil Cultural and Environmental with an office in Fargo, also submitted his findings. Rothaus was contacted by people with concerns because of his expertise in studying history and archaeology of battlefields of the U.S.-Dakota War.

He was planning to study the Battle of Killdeer Mountain in 2014, but he’s now moving that up due to the oil development. Rothaus and North Dakota State University history professor Tom Isern submitted a grant application to the National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program.

While the section of land being considered for oil development is nearly 3 miles from the historical marker of the Battle of Killdeer Mountain, the actual battlefield extended over a broad area, Rothaus said.

Rothaus, who holds a permit for cultural resource investigation from the State Historical Society of North Dakota, walked around the section of land in November and found numerous artifacts that indicate there’s a good chance than an encampment related to the Battle of Killdeer Mountain was located in that section. However, the actual nature of the archaeological sites require formal survey and evaluation, he said.

It’s unknown if the area could contain burial grounds of any of the approximately 150 Native Americans estimated to have died in the battle, Rothaus wrote in a letter.

In addition to the historical significance of the area, that section of land has soils that are unusually deep and intact, Rothaus said.

“I can assert that Section 36 has some of the highest potential for the presence of significant archaeological sites I have seen in North Dakota,” Rothaus says in a letter to state officials.

In addition to the historical significance, Killdeer Mountain is rich with cultural traditions for Native Americans and continues to be used for prayer and reflection, said Dakota Goodhouse, a program officer for the North Dakota Humanities Council and an enrolled member of Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

Goodhouse said because of the significance of the area, he’d like to see oil companies wait until technology advancements allow them to access the minerals with less disturbance to the area.

“The oil isn’t going anywhere,” Goodhouse said.

Lance Gaebe, commissioner for the North Dakota Department of Trust Lands, said if the wells are permitted, the department develops a surface impact agreement with Hess to make sure the wells have a minimal environmental impact.

The locations that are proposed are positioned in an area that’s flat, won’t create erosion, won’t impact drainage and doesn’t affect known historical resources, Gaebe said.

“They are in the best location they can be within that square mile,” Gaebe said.

Under the agreement, if an archaeological find is discovered during development, operations would cease and follow the guidance of a historical preservation office, Gaebe said.

Under law, state lands officials have a fiduciary responsibility to manage the minerals for the benefit of public schools and other public land owners.

Coyle said she understands the fiduciary responsibility to develop minerals on state lands, but preserving the area for purposes such as tourism should be another fiduciary responsibility.

“What’s the price of wildlife and what’s the price of archeology? There is no price. You can’t replace it,” Coyle said.

Rob Sand, member of the Killdeer Mountain Alliance, looks out at the area he and other landowners are trying to protect from oil development on Thursday.

http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/image/id/18894/headline/Sand/

This arrowhead was found by an archaeologist on Killdeer Mountain in an area proposed for oil development. Photo courtesy of Richard Rothaus

http://www.bakkentoday.com/event/image/id/600/headline/Arrowhead%20found%20on%20Killdeer%20Mountain/publisher_ID/82/

Oil development is proposed for an area of Killdeer Mountain, pictured here on Nov. 24, 2012, that an archaeologist says is rich with artifacts and historical significance. Photo courtesy of Richard Rothaus
http://www.bakkentoday.com/event/image/id/599/headline/Oil%20development%20planned%20for%20this%20area%20on%20Killdeer%20Mountain/publisher_ID/82/

One concern about oil development on an area of Killdeer Mountain is that truck traffic would create hazards for this school bus route pictured Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013. Amy Dalrymple/Forum News Service
http://www.bakkentoday.com/event/image/id/601/headline/Some%20say%20oil%20development%20would%20impact%20safety%20on%20this%20school%20bus%20route/publisher_ID/82/

http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/article/id/64937/