(Corrected/Updated in Red X 3)

The other day I was reading the latest outstanding issue of the Great Plains Examiner and saw a North Dakota state map showing where all the state-owned mineral acres are that were leased at the State Land Department's auction earlier this week.  When looking at the map I noticed that some of the mineral acres leased were in the neighborhood of Lake Tschida, a reservoir on the Heart River about half-way between Dickinson and Bismarck, 15 to 20 miles south of Interstate 94 in Grant County.  I contacted the Great Plains Examiner, and they've given me permission to use their map graphic so you can see what I was looking at.  Here's the map...

I know. That map is hard to read. Without cities/towns, lakes, rivers, highways, etc., on it, it's kinda hard to read.  (It might be a little easier to read if you right-click on it and open it in a new tab.) But what you need to know is that the green specks are the locations of all the school trust land mineral acres auctioned last week by the State Land Department.  If you didn't have a map like this -- or, preferablly, a map BETTER than this -- you'd never know where the Land Department was leasing mineral rights last week. Unless, of course, you're a land man or an attorney or realtor or GIS expert who deals with this stuff all the time, and you spent some time figuring it out.

It's hard to see, but if you know where Grant County is and if you know where Lake Tschida (Heart Butte) is, you can see there are a number of little green spots in the area of Lake Tschida, on this map. For those who don't know, Lake Tschida is a man-made reservoir about half-way between Bismarck and Dickinson, and then maybe 20 miles south of the Interstate.  (Click here for a Google map.) It's half-way between Glen Ullin and Elgin, along Highway 49. I looked at this map (above) and decided to dig a little further.  Here is what I figured out:  The State Land Department auctioned mineral acres last week, around Lake Tschida, including the blue shaded areas in this aerial photo...

This aerial photo might not mean anything to people who have never been to Lake Tschida, but I've been there, so I'll explain what you're looking at here. The upper-most blue square is right at the intersection of Highway 49 and the Crappy Creek (yeah, I know) turn-off gravel road. The blue square furthest to the right/east is basically the fishing area just below the Heart Butte dam and the hill to the North of the fishing area. It's the spillway area and apparently includes the spillway itself, and the public camping area. The other stuff is on the access road to the south-side (Elgin) trailer area, and on either side of a creek that runs into the lake near that trailer area. There are cabins within a couple hundred yards of some of these leased mineral acres.

There was a story in the Dickinson Press yesterday about a bicyclist who's filed a petition to stop oil rigs and wells from being put up near the Maah Daah Hey Trail.  Here's an exerpt from that story:

“Nobody’s going to want to come to the North Dakota Badlands and ride around oil well locations,” Landblom said.

Landblom, who works as a mountain bike outfitter along the trail, has mounted a petition drive to urge federal and state officials to protect public lands in the Badlands from drilling.

Dickinson Press

I wonder how cabin owners around Lake Tschida would have reacted if they'd known -- before the auction -- that mineral rights were about to be leased by the State Land Department for $1 per mineral acre last week. I wonder how many cabin owners realize the mineral acres leased last week included areas near their cabins and that they drive through to get to their cabins. I wonder how many people who fish at the Heart Butte Dam spillway realize mineral acres were leased in their fishing area last week, for $1 per acre. I wonder how many cabin owners would sign on to a petition like the one Mr. Landblom is pushing for the Badlands.

Now, let me point out a few things that might not be so obvious: private land owners in the area could sell or lease the mineral rights to land all around the lake, if they wanted. I'm guessing none of them would sell for $1 per acre. So part of what's troubling about this is that the companies that leased these mineral rights at the state auction now have a virtually free location on which to construct their well pads and set up their drilling rigs and where they can put their waste pits. Some of the mineral acres leased last week in other parts of Western North Dakota went for over $11,000 per acre. But these Lake Tschida mineral acres all went for $1 per acre. (Correction: One parcel was leased for $2 per acre.)  Also, if drilling rigs start popping up in the Lake Tschida area, the cabin access roads will surely be used by thousands of well service company trucks to haul water, equipment and people in and out of the area. Though not "pristine," this area is an area where lots of families drive in and out all summer to get to camping areas, to get boats in and out of the water. In the summertime, the community around the lake is kind of like a small town.

Here's a little bit of "full disclosure" for you folks:  My family has had a cabin on Lake Tschida since I was in Kindergarten. I grew up on Lake Tschida, at least in the Summers. When I was a kid -- maybe 3 or 4 years old -- my parents had a friend who owned a cabin there. We went there to visit several times. Then (I think) the family friend moved away and sold the small, one-room (plus one outhouse) cabin to my parents. It's been in my family ever since. (It's leased from the federal government, FYI.) I was -- and am -- a lake kid. I have a personal stake in this story, and I felt it appropriate to disclose that here.  So, if you want, you can accuse me of being selfish or acting out of NIMBY interest.  I'll accept that criticism. 

So you might say to me, "Chet. If you cared so much, why didn't you go lease those mineral acres -- or find other "lake people" and pool your resources to lease those acres -- if you cared so much?" Well, that's what I really wanted to talk about...

I didn't know.

I had no idea.

The State Land Department failed me. The media failed me. They failed all of us. All the press attention to the land auction centered around pristine areas around Bullion Butte and the Badlands.  I had no idea mineral rights were being leased all around Lake Tschida.  (Did you?) No. The media didn't tell us. The Land Department didn't tell us.  They also haven't told us what other recreational areas had mineral acres leased for cheap in other parts of western ND.

Sure... they'll come out and say, "We posted legal descriptions for the land where those mineral rights are on the internet and in the newspaper somewhere.  It's not our responsibility to generate a map to show you where these mineral rights actually are. "  

Well, okay. You got us all there, technically speaking. You held a sale and you gave us the legal descriptions. They looked like this (minus the "Lease No," "bidder" and "Bonus $" columns):

And great. Thanks for that. That really helped regular taxpayers know where you were going to be leasing mineral acres for $1.

Quiz: (1) Who can look at that list and -- without doing any research -- tell me which of those parcels is on or near Lake Tschida?  Answer:  Nobody can.

         (2)  Without googling it, who has the resources and know-how to figure out which is/are on or near Lake Tschida (or where any of these are)?  Answer: Maybe one or two of you.

Take-away:  They're trying to do this stuff on the down-low. They are and were doing this stuff in such a way that it stays below the public's radar.  If the folks in the Land Department were doing there job, they would have made an easily readable map, or a map for each county, and they would have put it online.  If the folks in our local media were doing their jobs, they would have asked the Land Department to do this BEFORE the auction. Or they would have made maps themselves.  

So I called the Land Department last week to ask for a copy of any map they had put together to show where the land to be auctioned was located. They got back to me this morning (Monday) to tell me they had never put such a map together. They told me they might be able to have someone from their IT department put something together, but they'd need to know my name, first.  What amazes me about that -- what bothers me about that -- is that the top map in this blog post was given to the Great Plains Examiner by the Land Department some time last month.  The Land Department DID put a map together. And they lied to me, and I'm just a little upset about it. I'm also upset because I was told they needed my name. North Dakota's open records laws say they cannot make me give them my name in order to provide requested records.  It's almost as if they were trying to hide something from the public.

And I believe they were.  And are.

I'm still upset. I don't like being lied to. I don't like when my government is sneaky and corrupt. I don't like when they hide things from me. And I'm upset with the press around here for dropping the ball.  (Except for the Great Plains Examiner, which at least did something.) I look forward to watching cabin owners react when they start seeing drilling rigs pop up around Lake Tschida.  And other cabin areas.  With no meaningful advance notice.

I deserve better.  We all do.

(By the way:  If you want to figure out where the other leased mineral acre lots are located, use this list (click here, go to Feb 2012 sale info) from the Land Department, and use this online GIS mapping system (click here) to match county, township, section and range to the legal descriptions on the Land Dept list.  I wish it was easier, but it is what it is.)

(For some additional background on this story, click here to read the follow-up I wrote the next day.)

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