Western North Dakota

In the last few years western North Dakota has been a hot bed for work in the oil industry. The last few years there have been development in fracking to first go deeper and second to become more efficient at fracking for oil. There have been many cases in this where spills are becoming normal and these spills are causing issues. This can have long lasting effects on the land that is being effected. The total of the spill has totaled 1,000 since the 2011. This has not just included oil but includes the water that replaces the oil when the oil comes up from the ground and oil liquids.

State of North Dakota does have agencies that inspect that these spills that are covered.be when seeing the issues sometimes there is an issue with clean up. This land that has had oil spills if not cleaned can cause issues with the feed for the cattle or make the land not farmable. Companies in western North Dakota need to realize these effects to clean up the land as quick as then can. Civil engineers, especially environmental engineers, have the responsibility to keep these spills minimal and make sure that the cleaning up process is done right.

With all the oil traffic in the Williston area the state is starting to see a rise in how much money is needed to spend on the roads. The roads are a key to the industries western North Dakota oil patches. In McKenzie County in western North Dakota required 200 million dollars to fix the roads due to all the truck traffic. When fixing the roads out there is hard because you can build a road one year but the next the road might be in rough shape. It is hard for the Department of Transportation to keep ahead of the traffic in the oil patch.

In one special case of salt water effecting wild life in Western North Dakota happened Charbonneau creek. What happened was a salt water line had ruptured and leaked one million gallons of this water into the creek. The creek was effect 15 miles away from the spill. Wild life was mostly destroyed by the salt water. Having to take a look at what was effected by the spill the engineers have to take a look to find the best solution. This doesn’t help the farmers who relied on their animals who used the creek as a water hole. This is an issue because it can hurt the environment and the owners of the land of the effected will have to find new ways to accommodate their animals.

With the oil fields there have been many issues that have risen that need to be addressed. The regulations in which the state of North Dakota has to have to deal with the oil spills is necessary. The way in which these spills are handled effect normal people who were living there as farmers. Another issue with the oil fields are the roads. The problem is starting to get to be a big issue because of all the truck traffic. It is hard to keep ahead of all the traffic to keep the roads good to travel on. These are a couple of the issue that need to be addressed in western North Dakota.

Links:

 http://www.propublica.org/article/the-other-fracking-north-dakotas-oil-boom-brings-damage-along-with-prosperi