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Thursday, March 1, 2012 ■ Covering the Williston Basin ■ Volume 2, Issue 9


Counties believe its not fair for state to keep overweight fi nes


By LAUREN DONOVAN Bismarck Tribune


Williams County Sheriff Scott Busch- ing is looking at a $40,000 invoice for a set of scales to weigh trucks that might be overloaded. When the scales are delivered, his spe-


cially trained deputies will enforce load limits out on the county’s already-bat- tered road system. Busching knows among thousands of


A plan for the oil patch


By LAUREN DONOVAN Bismarck Tribune


lief from thousands of semi trucks roar- ing through town as soon as this summer, a piece of very welcome news delivered Feb. 21 by state government offi cials who are out to prove that when oil-impacted communities talk, they listen. This northwestern oil patch city has


grown exponentially in just the past three years and a bypass that used to take heavy traffi c around town instead of through it is now congested, full of stop- lights and no longer doing the job. News that a new bypass will be built


WILLISTON — Williston will get re-


within the next several months was a small but critical piece of a report de- livered by Gov. Jack Dalrymple in a fol- low-up to 14 community meetings held throughout the oil patch earlier this year.


tankers and freight trucks there are plenty of violations going on out there. He said some companies just fi gure the fi nes if their truckers get caught are part of the cost of doing business. And those fi nes can be substantial


— up to $20,000 in one recent instance of a truck so over weighted, road gravel was running up the sides of its squatted tires. What irritates Busching, though, is


that even if his deputy catches the viola- tor out on the county road, the fi nes get turned over to the state, which in turn redistributes the revenue back to coun- ties by population, not by where the fi nes were collected. But that might change. In last week’s “state response to impact fi ndings” report, state offi cials announced


Continued on page 7


The report said state government will focus on transportation, safety, housing and planning to help the region get more settled into this tumultuous period of development and growth. New oil wells are being drilled at the


rate of 1,500 to 2,000 a year and the state’s oil production continues to set and break records every month. In addition to a $10 million bypass


— the preferred word is “reliever route” — in Williston, Dalrymple announced, another one will be built this summer around the northeast side of New Town for another $6 million. Tom Rolfstad, development coordi-


nator for Williston, said the double por- tion of good news is that the replacement bypass will be asphalt, not gravel, even though a portion of it is only temporary until the Department of Transportation can settle on a fi nal design.


Lesson offered


on fracturing We all need to understand the horizontal drilling and the fracturing — 2


LAUREN DONOVAN/Tribune


Department of Transportation director Francis Ziegler talks about a new bypass that will be built around the northwest side of Williston this summer, the $10 million project is part of the response to community concerns expressed at 14 oil patch meetings over the past several months.


It’s estimated that somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 trucks haul through the town every day. Rick Leuthold, chairman of a design


engineering fi rm in Williston, said trucks make up “way more than half” the traf- fi c on U.S. Highways 85 and 2 in town, a number that’s more typically 20 to 30 percent. “I’ve been a lot of places, but I’ve nev- er seen anything like this,” he said. Leu- thold said the report was a welcome part of growth. “They’re not putting their head in the sand,” he said. Department of Transportation Di-


rector Francis Ziegler said trucks can’t be forced to use the bypass, but drivers will hopefully prefer the faster route unim-


Boom town from


the teen perspective Williston’s rapid growth has changed resident’s lifestyles and ideas about change — 4


peded by stoplights. To emphasize the changing nature of the oil boom and the need to commu- nicate, Dalrymple said an energy impact coordinator — probably based in Wil- liston — will be added to monitor the situation in the oil patch and report to state offi cials. In yet another indication that Dal-


rymple’s administration is serious about helping the oil patch, the governor said it’s time to look at how oil taxes are di- vided between the state and the oil-im- pacted counties. Rolfstad said that was also good news


for Williston, because it’s not something the governor’s been willing to talk about before.


Continued on page 8 Higher gas prices


cloud re-election Gas is up 25 cents since Jan. 1 and could hurt recent improved economy


— 18


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