Bakken – Page 6 – Dustin Monke

The boom’s ‘epicenter:’ Oil Patch hub Watford City adjusts to burgeoning population, financial questions

WATFORD CITY — There are days, Brent Sanford said, when he struggles to wrap his head around everything happening in his hometown.

Ten years ago, Sanford returned to Watford City to take over his family’s automotive dealership. He soon found himself on the city council and was elected mayor in 2010 — right as oil and gas exploration in the Bakken shale formation was beginning to put a stranglehold on northwest North Dakota communities.

Today, Sanford and other Watford City leaders are facing challenges few small towns in America ever have to endure. All the while, he said, they’re trying to keep their once-quiet community from becoming just another “dirty oil town.”

The goal, Sanford and other city leaders said, is to keep pace with growth that has gripped Watford City because of the unprecedented oil boom — it enters the construction season with $240 million in infrastructure needs, ranging from streets to schools — while maintaining its appeal as a progressive and welcoming home where people want to put down roots.

But that is more challenging than anyone could have ever imagined.

“Everything is in flux, basically,” Sanford said.

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There’s no place like Watford City

Nothing in America compares to what’s happening right now in Watford City. It’s as simple as that.

As Williston gets the headlines and Dickinson sees the benefits of the Bakken oil boom while not having to deal with the truly dirty side of it, Watford City is stuck right in the middle of it all — “the epicenter” of the biggest shale oil play in American history, as McKenzie County Economic Development Director Gene Veeder put it.

Most of the talk about Watford City in the past couple years has been about the bypass to send Highway 85’s heavy truck traffic around the city. Lately, we learned of a company in Watford City improperly disposing of radioactive filter socks.

But to truly understand what’s happening on the ground, you have to sit down and speak to the city’s leaders.

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Sculpting success: Oil boom helps Dickinson native’s welding business take off

0302 Iron Works 1 — Mike Gayda stands outside of the Iron Works Welding shop in north Dickinson.

Mike Gayda tried going to college.

After attending Dickinson State University for a short time he acknowledged, “College wasn’t for me.”

So, knowing he had a talent for welding, he took jobs with Steffes Corp. in Dickinson and at the Case IH Steiger plant in Fargo. It was at the latter that the Dickinson native had a chance conversation with a co-worker who tipped him off about welders running their own service trucks in the burgeoning western North Dakota oil fields.

So, in 2006, Gayda decided to move home and start his own business.

“It was perfect timing,” Gayda said.

When he was 20 years old, Gayda started Iron Works Welding with one service truck. He worked out of a heatless quonset on Dickinson’s south side by himself.

By 2008, before the true onset of the oil boom, he had found enough work to hire two employees and build a 6,800 square-foot building on a little less than an acre of land on a space just north of Dickinson in the industrial park off Highway 22.

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Enough is enough with Keystone XL

I’ve always wondered about the people who protest certain topics. Are they really that upset? Does everything rile them up that much? Does somebody pay these people to protest? Is this their job?

Lately, every time there is political movement on the Keystone XL pipeline, there’s an environmental activist group there with a protest — though we don’t get to see it because the protests usually only take place in a coastal California city like San Francisco or Los Angeles, and, of course, Washington, D.C. Both places are so far from where the proposed pipeline would go that one has to wonder why people would protest for something they’ve likely never seen in a place they’ve likely never been nor ever plan to go.

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Dickinson’s little world hinges on the big picture

A look at the neighboring Halliburton and Baker Hughes campuses in north Dickinson.

Last week brought word of numerous brand-name businesses planning to open in Dickinson.

Franchisees of Famous Dave’s barbecue restaurants are making plans to come here — though they aren’t sure where or when — and Five Diamond properties says Petco, JoAnn Fabrics and Dollar Tree are among the retailers planning to lease space in its new development planned for west Dickinson. The Roers West Ridge development has Menards and hotels that are sure to draw other big-box stores. Who knows? Maybe someone will even bring in Target for those of you who can’t stand Walmart.

I say this all the time because I believe it will be true: At the rate we’re going, there is going to be an entirely new part of Dickinson off Interstate 94’s Exit 59 in a couple of years.

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