Two reports on the issue of whether transitory housing will remain in Williston: one court case closed with one remaining; city allows another year and a half to remove the camps.
Young guys who moved to North Dakota and decided to stay have brought their wifes to the area and guess what? Lots of them are having babies. By the way, our son is in that category, our daughter-in-law is someone who moved as well, and our grandson is one of the following statistics.
Finally, an indicator why people in North Dakota don’t like all the changes. I get it. Really, I get it: there are ugly sides to economic expansion.
6/8 – Amy Dalrymple at Oil Patch Dispatch – Williston Wins One Crew Camp Court Case, Another Looms – There are two cases and process against the city’s plan to shut down all crew camps. The case in state court has ended with the judge refusing to issue an injunction.
The federal case is still pending.
Wouldn’t it be sadly ironic if the man camps were all forcibly shut down immediately before drilling picks up in response to rising oil prices and lots of workers have no place to live? The leadership of Williston has positioned the city to be incapable of handling a surge in drilling.
6/14 – Amy Dalrymple at Oil Patch Dispatch – Williston Crew Camps Get More To Find A New Purpose (sic) – City commissions gave crew camps owners in Williston another year and a half to either repurpose or remove the crew camps within reach of the City Commission.
Previous deadline of 7/1/16 to close all camps still stands. Owners previously were required to remove the facilities by 9/1/16. The deadline in the first reading allows until 5/1/18 to remove the camps and 8/1/18 to reclaim the sites.
I do hope there is an outbreak of wisdom behind this decision: this extension might allow for reconsideration of the whole issue if oil activity steps up. That would allow housing to become available quickly so new workers wouldn’t have to sleep in their cars again.
5/21 – Dickinson Press – Oh, Baby! – Number of babies delivered in Dickinson is rising, even as the overall population is dropping.
The underlying demographic is that many guys who left their families at home while they went to the Bakken for work have left the state when employment levels dropped. Other guys who brought their families with them at some point have decided to stay. As a result, there are a lot of couples having babies.
Lots of babies.
6/14 – Forum News Service at Dickinson Press – Arizona man sent to prison in one of largest meth seizures in N.D. – Just in case you were still wondering why natives of North Dakota were not happy with changes in the last decade, consider this article.
An Arizona man earned a 20 year sentence in state prison for possession and distribution of methamphetamine.
A routine traffic stop resulting in police finding one pound of meth in his rented car. A search of his hotel room found another 10 pounds. That’s an 11 pound haul.
I don’t know the dosing of meth, in other words how many people could get high from that much dope. I am aware enough to know that is a massive amount of drugs.
The internet is cool….Found a site that says the legal dosage under supervision of a doctor for treatment of obesity is 5 milligrams. At the legal usage level, this doper’s 11 pounds would be 4,989 grams, or about 1,000 legal doses. Like I said, that is a massive amount of dope.
State prison. Twenty years.
Seems about right. And well earned.