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Burke County has ‘super’ women
Burke County, on the edge of the oil patch, has three school districts and women are superintendents of all three.
That definitely makes one of the state’s most rural counties a progressive anomaly. The state Department of Public Instruction says there are about 170 superintendents in the state, and just 30 of them have women at the helm
Three of those 30 are Bowbells, Powers Lake and Burke Central in Lignite, Burke County towns all three.
Celeste Thingvold is at the helm in Bowbells, Sherry Lallim in Lignite and Sue Gunderson in Powers Lake.
Thingvold taught in Watford city for three years before moving to Bowbells in 1998. She has been superintendent there since 2013.
Lallim started teach in Bowbells in 1999, moved to Burke Central, then became elementary principal at Divide County in Crosby before returning to Lignite.
Gunderson started as K-12 music teacher at Powers Lake in 1996. She continued teaching and studying, eventually becoming credentialed to do administrative work and taking over this year as superintendent.
Burke County Tribune, Bowbells
Pioneering plant encounters troubles
North Dakota LNG, highly-touted as a pioneering liquefied natural gas processor when it came on line last year, will be issued a cease and desist order after failing to pay for a Tioga building permit issued last January for $39,000.
The company began construction of a plant that converts natural gas feedstock into motor fuel by supercooling methane into a liquid state. The plant uses methane from the nearby Hess facility.
The product is gaining in popularity because it burns cleanly and emits less carbon than other fuels sources.
But Tioga city commissioners were alerted to the unpaid fee by City Auditor Abby Salinas at the last city commission meeting. At that time, the board was unsure whether LNG had paid the permit fee to the county instead of the city.
Salinas received word last week that neither the Williams County Building Department nor the county’s planning and zoning department had received payment.
Commissioners moved to issue a cease and desist order until the fee is paid.
Tioga Tribune
Tioga house numbers needed for emergencies
County dispatch receives the calls one after another – nine 9-1-1 dials and hangups in rapid succession. They come from a cell phone located somewhere in the north end of Tioga.
Police Officer Matthew Ballantyne arrives at the address dispatch calls out, but no buildings display the number given.
The closest building is a three-story housing complex, so Ballantyne responds as he was trained: he clears the entire building, door by door. He finds nothing, but knows that as the responding officer, it’s critical he find the caller immediately.
On a hunch, he moves to the building across the street, a newly erected business. There he encounters the caller, who accidentally hit the emergency dial button on his cell phone.
Houses that aren’t numbered properly, as well as a small lag in newly appointed addresses showing up in county maps, sometimes hamper response times of police and other emergency personnel.
At a recent city commission meeting, Police Administrator Jeff Spivey brought up the issue and requested the city strengthen its ordinance requiring houses to be numbered.
“I think a numbering rule for the whole town is appropriate,” he said.
Tioga Tribune
Dense clay contains spill in Divide County
“We got lucky,” says Jody Gunlock, Divide County emergency manager.
“Really, really dense clay,” about 60 feet thick, kept a recent 4,600-barrel brine spill northwest of Crosby from growing into a more serious problem, he said.
The clay layer also kept the spill from seeping into the ground, possibly contaminating a pothole and perhaps entering underlying aquifers.
The spill was reported Aug. 5 at a saltwater gathering system and was the result of a pipeline leak.
Some 179,000 gallons of brine seeped out of the pipeline before being discovered.
The pipeline has since been repaired, the leak stopped, and Samson has removed more than 1,060 barrels nearly 45,000 gallons of brine from the site.
Samson also excavated about a foot of soil from an 800-foot by 800-foot area around the spill.
Other than where the pipeline channel was, Gunlock said, little brine actually seeped into the ground due to the clay layer.
Gunlock said he was notified by Samson that the company is waiting for the state’s go-ahead to backfill the damaged area with clean topsoil.
But he said the State Health Department has been slow to get around to okaying these efforts.
“It shouldn’t take that long,” he said, “unless someone dropped the ball.”
The Journal, Crosby
Watford City schools see record enrollment
Preliminary enrollment numbers indicate Watford City schools will see yet another year of record enrollment.
Superintendent Steve Holen said the district Aug. 14 counted 1,396 students, which is 171 more than it had a year ago.
Holen says that the district typically sees some changes in student numbers the first two weeks of school as some students who had registered move to another district, while other students are still registering for classes.
Last year, according to Holen, the district had 1,301 students enrolled on Sept. 10. And he is confident that the district will have more than 1,400 students on Sept. 10 of this year.
While the growth in student numbers this year is slightly smaller than projections, Holen is pleased with the growth.
“Our enrollment projection study forecast we would have an enrollment of 1,540 this year,” states Holen. “But we are still confident in the projected long-term enrollment numbers.
According to the study, the district is projected to have 2,584 students at the start of the 2019-20 school year, and 3,933 students by the start of the 2024-25 school year.
McKenzie County Farmer, Watford City