AlterNet: North Dakota tribe deals with impact of energy boom

Monday, September 24, 2012  

"When the black gold rush began, no one on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation expected it to take down Main Street.

A modest strip of one- and two-story buildings framed by undulating plains, Main Street doubled as the reservation’s community hub, in the tradition of small towns. Neighbors caught up at the Jack and Jill grocery, elders strolled to the library, children rode their bikes on the streets.

No one imagined tanker trucks barreling up and down Main Street, back-to-back like freight trains, seven days and nights a week. No one predicted construction zones that grind traffic to a halt as far as the eye can see, the deafening clatter of semis, the dust kicked up by 10,000 vehicles pulverizing the two-lane road every day or the smell and taste of diesel. No one anticipated the accidents, two or more a week on Main Street and all over the rutted reservation roads, costing lives and shattering families.

In fact, Fort Berthold, home of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, or Three Affiliated Tribes, did not reckon on a lot when North Dakota invited the energy industry to Drill Baby Drill. No one knew that energy companies in search of housing for their workers would buy private property and evict some of the reservation’s poorest residents from their homes. No one planned on police and fire calls multiplying. No one guessed that on a reservation of nearly one million acres, all the deer would disappear.

In the heart of the refuge of recession America, this little-known tribe is grappling mightily with the consequences of striking oil.

“It’s horrible,” said Becky Deschamp, a 41-year-old lifelong Fort Berthold resident."

Get the Story:
The North Dakota Oil Fracking Boom Creates Clash of Money and Devastation (AlterNet 9/22)