Dakota Beacon

When the National Weather Service presented its December flood outlook for the Red River Basin, it cautioned there is much winter remaining.  Having said that, the NWS believes Fargo-Moorhead faces a greater than 50 percent chance of major flooding in the spring.  The NWS gives the same odds that Devils Lake will break its record level by 2.5 feet.  The outlook is presented earlier than usual because of the seriousness of the situation in Devils Lake.  Building blocks for flooding are already in place -- soil moisture and stream flows are high and snowpack is well above normal.  The major unknown is the nature of the spring melt.

For 110 years annual rainfall in Fargo averaged 20 inches.  In the early ‘90s that began to change and since then Fargo annual rainfall has averaged 24 inches bringing increased flooding.  Fargo weatherman John Wheeler says don’t blame rural drainage or expanding cities, a 20% increase in rain and snow is the obvious cause of increased flooding.

On the last day of 2010, ND's new governor declared a statewide winter storm emergency.  You didn't read about it in the Fargo Forum because it couldn't be delivered.  A 100-car, quarter of a mile accident on I-94 west of Fargo fortunately did not result in any deaths, but eight hours were required to complete snowmobile rescues.

U.S. Highways 52 and 281 both originate at the Canadian border and merge in Carrington.  Hwy 281 continues south through the Great Plains terminating in the very tip of Texas.  Hwy 52 joins I-94 in Jamestown and continues southeast to Midwest manufacturing areas.  Sitting among Indian artifacts in Carrington’s Chieftain Restaurant, you can watch the heavy flow of large trucks on Hwy 52/281 -- the ubiquitous grain semis, but also loads of construction equipment and pipe headed for the oil fields.  Two-lane Hwy 52 is unique among ND highways in that it presents a diagonal path through much of the state.  This year, there have been three heavy truck collisions near Carrington, killing two and hospitalizing others.  Hwy 52 is becoming a state priority for a divided highway.

Just a few institutions hold a small ND town together: usually a school, grocery, cafe and pharmacy.  Pharmacies are not only important to individuals, but also nearby nursing homes and hospitals.  As the owner operators of retail pharmacies retire, there is often no young pharmacist willing to take their place.  The need is met with telepharmacies operated by trained pharmacy technicians supervised at a distance by videoconferencing.  The practice is spreading rapidly -- ND has 72 telepharmacies.  Research indicates the telepharmacies are every bit as reliable as their predecessors.

In the last decade, the ND population grew about 5 percent; its American Indian population grew about 15 percent.  About 36,000 Indians live in ND comprising about 6 percent of the population.  The executive director of the state’s Indian Affairs Commission said, “We don’t migrate out of the state.  For the most part, we stay in North Dakota and stay close to home.”

You are supposed to call them “crew camps,” but most people use the politically incorrect term “man camps.”  These are the dormitory type facilities that house single people working in ND’s Oil Patch.  The rooms are rather small and spartan, but the camps otherwise have many of the amenities of good hotels.  Some have excellent chefs and provide better meals than nearby towns.  Lauren Donovan of the Tribune says employers often pick up the tab, which typically amounts to $3,000 a month for room and board.  The North Williston man camp has 280 rooms and is run by Target Logistics with a staff of 15.

St. Paul people, listen up!  If you have $82, you can buy a roundtrip to Devils Lake on Amtrak’s famous “Perch Express.”  The train carries hundreds of ice fishermen from Wisconsin and Minnesota to Devils Lake to pursue jumbo perch.

Business leaders in Bismarck are upbeat about 2011.  One said “that Bismarck, with its proximity to government and services, could become a commercial center for the parts of the energy industry that work out of offices rather than in the field.”

I confess I didn’t know who they were and had to look them up: Josh Duhamel, a movie and TV actor born in Minot, and his wife, Stacy Ferguson (Fergie), an actress and singer.  The couple spent time in Fargo during Christmas weekend.  The Minot Daily News alleges that the Forum encouraged readers to send in photos of the celebrity couple during their visit -- essentially recruiting paparazzi.  MDN said “We’re not about to go chasing him around town” hinting the Forum was both tasteless and intrusive.

Tribune columnist Clay Jenkinson is constantly on the go.  The scholarly host of the “The Thomas Jefferson Hour” has many consulting and academic engagements, but has found a way to deliver his weekly Tribune columns while maintaining a busy travel schedule.  His travel experiences become the subject of his columns.  Recently Jenkinson drove from ND to Kansas on a trip he frequently makes for family reasons.  Here are a few of his observations: ”I love the fact that every town on the plains has an implement dealership out at the edge of town, with one of its tractors or combines carefully outlined with Christmas lights. I love to see the doctor's or dentist's or lawyer's "mansion" at the edge of town with an expensive wrought-iron fence that raised eyebrows around the coffee table at the coop store.”  He proclaims “This is America.”

The sports editor of the Jamestown Sun has a favorite 2010 story. The Bowden-Fessenden 9-man football team was shrinking away, their roster whittled down to 12 players, but they charged onward winning the state championship at the Alerus Center.  That contest proved to be the final game of their existence.

Wanted: A big steam host.  The coal-fired heat and power plant near Jamestown called Spiritwood Station, which will begin commercial operation in one year, was designed to furnish steam to a large corn-ethanol facility.  All is going smoothly, except for one thing, there will be no ethanol plant.  The combined operations were to be the synergistic jewel of Jamestown’s industrial strategy.  The good news is the plant uses new technologies to dry coal and capture emissions -- it will be the cleanest coal-fired plant in the state, possibly anywhere.

For the time being, there are dramatic shifts in relative business activity in ND.  In the third quarter, state taxable sales rose 28%. The increase is impressive by any standard, but is only part of the story.  In the northwest sector of the state five counties had increases over 50% -- Williams (Williston) had an increase of 155%.  In the northeast sector, many counties had decreases -- Pembina had a decrease of 25%.