PAGE 38 — Monday, June 10, 2013 / AGWEEK
REGIONAL NEWS
Farm Land
Buy-Sell-Exchange FOR SALE: 150 Acres Griggs County ND Farmland SE of Hannaford ND Good Productive Land
SOLD
FOR SALE: 160 Acres Cass County ND Farmland armland West of Kindred ND Weighted A Average Productivity 91.5%
SOLD
FOR SALE: 1,113.13 Acres Wells ells County ND Farmland North of Fessenden ND Good Productive Land
SOLD
G N I D N PE
FOR SALE: ALE: 160 Acres Ransom County ND Farmland SW of Kathryn ND
SOLD
FOR SALE: 160 Acres SW of Cogswell, N.Dak.
FOR SALE: 160 Acres Cass County, N.D. Farmland South of Buffalo, North Dak Dakota Excellent quality farmland
G N I D N PE
FOR SALE: 162.97 acres Sargent County, N.D. Farmland South West of Cogswell, N.D. enrolled in CRP
SOLD
FOR SALE: 160.00 Acres Walsh County, N.D. Farmland North of Michigan, N.D. combination Tillable & Hunting
G N I D N PE FOR SALE: 320 acres Nelson County ND Farmland South of Pekin ND Cropland and Pasture
G N I D PEN FOR SALE: 160 acres LaMoure County, ND FarmLand South of State Hwy 46 and West of State Hwy 1 Excellent Quality Land FOR SALE: 160.00 Acres Ransom County, North Dakota Farm Land South of Kathryn, North Dakota with Irrigation Permit Pending FOR SALE: 160.00 Acres Barnes County, North Dakota FarmLand South West of Kathryn, North Dakota FOR SALE: 213.3 Acres Ransom County, North Dakota FarmLand South of Kathryn, North Dakota 40 years of agricultural experience in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota
Steven Johnson Farm Land Sales
Johnson Auction and Realty LLC
701-799-5213
steve@johnsonauctionandrealty.com
R006894383
www.johnsonauctionandrealty.com
In ND oil country, farmers frustrated by dust, chemicals n
Recent rains won’t solve the problem
By Katherine Grandstrand
Forum News Service
DICKINSON, N.D. — Western North Dakota has been getting a big splash of Mother Nature’s dust control — rain — but that doesn’t mean it won’t be an issue when the rain stops and the prairie dries. When harvesting his fields last fall, Mike Schollmeyer noticed his yield sensor dropping the closer he got to oil field roads on his property. “My combine has a pretty nice yield monitor and computer system in it, and it lets me know exactly where my fields are doing well and where they need improvement,” the Dunn County farmer says. “Green is excellent yield and red is pretty poor yield. And you can see that change from green to red as you get closer to that road.” While there is a slight drop in yield near the edge of a field caused by higher tractor traffic, it’s nothing compared with that caused by scoria dust coming up off the road. “This is just a dust issue,” Schollmeyer says. But he noticed the biggest impact when the wells were being fracked — with an average 2,500 trucks driving down a road to complete the process. Once the exploration phase is complete, the truck traffic, and therefore major dust issues, drop dramatically. “I can document that we do have an economic loss because of this,” Schollmeyer says. “Really, the question is, ‘Who’s paying for it?’ It’s the farmer that has to pay for it. And if you have the misfortune of having a road going through your property, and that road is servicing two or three or four wells, you can have 10,000 trucks in a season going down one of these roads.” In neighboring McKenzie County, a place hit even harder by oil exploration, the county has budgeted $3.5 million for dust control, Operations Engineer Mike Dollinger says. “There’s lots of dust,” Dollinger says. “Most of the majority of it is due to oil — it’s the heavy truck traffic.” The dust — and the budget item —
weren’t there five years ago, Dollinger says. The same goes for Dunn County’s dust control, which is budgeted for $2 million this year, County Auditor Tracey Dolezal says. “It affects everything,” Dollinger says. “It affects the way the crops grow; the crops that are within a quarter- to half-mile of the roads. It’s in the houses, it’s everywhere.” In Dunn County, Oxy and Marathon Oil regularly have representatives at county commission meetings, Dolezal says. Financially, oil companies aren’t directly supporting dust control efforts in McKenzie County, Dollinger says. “The oil companies are being taxed,” Dollinger says. “And they figure their taxes are what should come back to us.” McKenzie County is expected to get $32.5 million back in oil impact funds. It’s not just the impact from dust that worries Schollmeyer. He has a few wells on his land, and oil companies spray the pads with sterilant, which kills all plant life trying to grow on the scoria. “If you get a drenching rain — if you get an inch of rain in 10 minutes — that scoria will actually run off into your field and then get deposited in your field,” Schollmeyer says. “Now your field is contaminated with a sterilant.” He’s had the Environmental Protection Agency out to check the soil, but has had issues proving the contamination came from the oil pads. “I don’t own the mineral (rights), but I do own the surface and basically, you can’t stop them from drilling, they can drill whether you want them to or not, but at least you should be able to tell them what kind of chemicals they can spray on your land,” Schollmeyer says. “The oil companies can spray anything they want, even though it’s your property.” If the companies used agricultural herbicides, such as Roundup, the impact wouldn’t be as devastating, Schollmeyer says. “If they spray sterilants year after year after year on an oil site, how do they plan on putting that ground back in production 25 years from now?” Schollmeyer asks.