Monke – Page 20 – Dustin Monke

A veteran’s farewell: Benesh, who helped plan military memorial services in town for 16 years, steps aside

Brian Benesh, right, speaks Wednesday during Veterans Day Services at Stickney Auditorium in Dickinson State University’s May Hall.

When Brian Benesh began planning Veterans Day Services in Dickinson 16 years ago, they were held at the St. Anthony Club.

Over the years, attendance has grown so much that the services need to be held at Stickney Auditorium in Dickinson State University’s May Hall, one of the city’s largest venues.

Benesh said Wednesday during the service’s recognition ceremony that he’s stepping down as the planner of Veterans Day and Memorial Day events to focus his volunteerism on memorializing veterans’ gravesites in cemeteries with American flags.

“The time has come for me to just spend my time and efforts on my cemeteries and honoring those people,” Benesh said. “These programs will run themselves. That won’t be a problem. But it’s time to let go.”

First Sgt. Scott Obrigewitch, a Dickinson teacher and master of ceremonies for Wednesday’s service, said he didn’t have to worry about the program with Benesh in charge.

“When he calls me up, it’s pretty much planned,” Obrigewitch said. “He has everything lined up.”

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Editorial: The long rejection for Keystone XL

Why did it take President Barack Obama seven years to reject the Keystone XL pipeline?

We’ll never know the answer to that question.

What we do know is that the president seemed pretty happy with himself Friday when he finally took a knee holding the political football he’d seemingly been playing keep-away with since his first term began.

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62 miles of debate: Proposal to make Highway 85 four lanes through southern Bakken with excitement, questions

A semi truck hauling oil is followed by two vehicles on U.S. Highway 85 while going through the small town of Fairfi eld about 16 miles north of Interstate 94 on Saturday morning. A street sign denoting the highway was recently clipped by a vehicle and is now crooked.

FAIRFIELD, N.D. — Joe Kessel is blunt when he talks about a proposed project that would make U.S. Highway 85 four lanes from Interstate 94 to Watford City, N.D.

“Why haven’t they got it done yet?” he asks with a hearty laugh.

The Billings County Commissioner lives a half-mile off the well-traveled Bakken Oil Patch thoroughfare only about four miles south of the McKenzie County line and said he deals with oilfield traffic every day. He even believes the drop in oil prices over the past year hasn’t created that much of a slowdown along the highway.

The public will get a glimpse of the 62-mile project proposed by the North Dakota Department of Transportation for the first time this week when public scoping meetings are held at 5 p.m. Monday at Belfield City Hall and at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Watford City City Hall.

Jamie Olson, the NDDOT’s public information specialist, said there’s no telling how long the four-laning process would take, but said it could last upward of a decade. There’s also no dollar amount attached to the project yet, as it must go through multiple approval steps first.

“It’ll take a long time once they complete that environmental (assessment) portion of it,” she said. “That’ll help to answer some of those questions: How long are we looking at? What are the options?”

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Disgust in Bowman County, Baker over Keystone XL rejection

Pipes to be used in the Keystone XL pipeline sit in a railyard near Gascoyne, about 65 miles southwest of Dickinson, in this file photo from 2013. (Dustin Monke / File / The Dickinson Press)

SCRANTON, N.D. — Ken Steiner looks out the window of his house and sees thousands of pipes sitting in a railyard.

Today, the Bowman County Commissioner learned those pipes aren’t going anywhere soon.

As much as 600 miles of 36-diameter metal pipe intended for use in the Keystone XL oil pipeline project will likely sit unused and in stacks near the tiny southwest North Dakota town of Gascoyne–about 65 miles southwest of Dickinson–after President Barack Obama announced he was rejecting the 1,179-mile pipeline project proposed by TransCanada Corp.

Keystone XL’s rejection comes more than 2,600 days after it was proposed in 2008 and more than three years since the pipes began being stored in eastern Bowman County.

“Everybody has been wondering what’s going on,” Steiner said. “… It puts a bad taste in everybody’s mouth because people think it should have been done a long time ago. I don’t see that one person should have the authority to OK that. It don’t seem right to me.”

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Meet your neighbors, don’t hide from them

How well do you know your neighbor? Do you even know your neighbor? What’s their name? What do they do?

About 10 days before Halloween, we had a story on our front page about how some people’s house decorations for the holiday had been riling up their neighbors. One woman said she believed her neighbors were going too far with such items as a mannequin hanging off the roof of their house from a noose.

Others brought up the fake “dead” baby dolls in another yard. The concerned parties expressed their frustrations to us and others via social media before they even took the time to talk to their actual neighbors about the problem they had with the decorations.

That’s a bigger problem than someone hanging a mannequin off their roof as a gag.
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