Month: June 2014

Mitigation. There’s a word that draws mixed reaction. Most dictionaries generally define mitigation as “the act of making a condition or consequence less severe, the process of becoming milder or gentler.” It’s a word we didn’t much find in common usage in North Dakota until the 1970s, when the Garrison Diversion project surfaced. That project … Continue reading You Can’t Mitigate Greed

Caught a rerun of the Beverly Hillbillies the other day. Then I turned on the news and learned that we've reached a milestone in North Dakota--we're producing a million barrels of oil a day--way more than old Jed Clampett could have imagined. And there's the North Dakota Petroleum Council feeding crawdads and Cajun shrimp to … Continue reading A Million Barrels A Day

About ten years ago, Ken and Norma Eberts decided to sell their Bad Lands ranch and retire. The ranch is directly across the river from the Elkhorn Ranch Site, home to our 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt. It is where he developed his famous conservation ethic, before becoming America’s greatest Conservation President. Ken and Norma knew … Continue reading The Saga of the Elkhorn Continues: What’s a FONSI?

I’m an old liberal who, my conservative friends say, “never met a tax he didn’t like.” Well, they’re pretty much right. Taxes generally do good things for people, especially those at the local level. The federal government is often another story. But that’s our own fault, for electing the wrong people sometimes, and leaving them … Continue reading Finally, A Tax I Don’t Like