One in five eligible North Dakotans turned out to vote in June’s primary election. My county did better than the state average with 43% voter turnout in Kidder County. But little Billings County in western North Dakota, home to Theodore Roosevelt National Park and 945 people, did better than all of us with 59.25% voter turnout. Teddy would be proud.
You could drive from Watford City to New York City and the distance would be roughly the equivalent of the miles of roads maintained by McKenzie County in the western North Dakota oil patch.
“It’s right around 1,500 to 1,800 miles of roads with gravel and pavement,” says McKenzie County Road Superintendent Layton Northrop.
Howdy Lawlar has driven most of them.
Farming in his tractor or feeding his registered Black Angus cattle.
Driving to county commission meetings as chairman or responding to calls as a volunteer fireman.
On July 5, Carrington Fire Chief Ken Wangen had a call for a “locomotive fire.” When he arrived on scene about 9 miles southeast of Carrington near Bordulac, he found 29 rail cars carrying hazardous materials, including anhydrous ammonia, had derailed, causing a massive fire.
Thanks to the quick response by Wangen and other local responders, and with assistance from urban and rural fire departments in Jamestown, Kensal, Pingree, New Rockford, Sykeston, Harvey, Devils Lake and Rugby, there were no casualties.
North Dakota Living, the state’s largest-circulated publication and statewide electric cooperative magazine, will conduct a readership survey later this summer. If you are randomly selected to participate, we ask you to consider taking the survey.
Magazine readership surveys are conducted at regular intervals, ideally every three to five years. The last North Dakota Living readership survey was completed in May 2020.
“I don’t know that we could have did it without her,” says Corey Hart, a Bowdon area rancher who in 2010 desired to have a local meat processing facility in his community.
Many wouldn’t have thought it could be done. Period.
Bowdon’s population was 127 in 2010. The project faced challenges. A lack of people and capital, but not a lack of heart.
If the community of Bowdon wanted it bad enough, Lori Capouch was willing to try.
A 5-gallon bucket of carrots, “unwashed and dirty,” and three ice cream pails of chokecherries.
“That’s how my business got started,” says Diane Schmidt, recalling her first sales attempt at the Mandan Farmers Market nearly 40 years ago.
Schmidt was a single mom at the time. She’d haul kids and carrots to the farmers market on Saturday mornings. She can still picture her young boys, in 1986, sitting on the curb while Mom made sales.
The electric industry is in a state of transition. In the mid-2000s, a shift away from fossil-fuel generation toward renewables began taking shape. The green energy conversation has dominated the industry for several decades. Consumers have more interest in where and how their power is produced. Policy, regulation and private investment capital continue to step on the accelerator toward a lower carbon future.
But, another critical conversation has emerged in recent years – it’s message ringing louder and louder as extreme weather events test the nation’s electric grid.
