Random Update Of Road Conditions In The Bakken Oil Patch

The Bismarck Tribune is reporting:

Williams County road Superintendent Dennis Nelson has a one-word description for the county roads in the oil patch around Williston.

"Terrible," he said.

Last week, the county shut down truck traffic in the oil patch while Nelson pushed his crews to the limit to get the worst roads repaired. They're still terrible, he said.

This week, it was clear that the brief but expensive time-out for the oil industry got everyone's attention. A hastily called meeting Friday in Watford City drew a roomful of state transportation and county officials, road engineers and superintendents and oil representatives to talk about what's next.

Williams County, along with Divide County, achieved the shutdown by setting load restrictions so light only pickups and small service trucks could get around.
At the meeting, the phrase "load restriction" was never raised. Instead, it was replaced with the "private-public partnerships," to describe how counties can work with oil industry to maintain roads.

The oil industry donated equipment and materials to help fix Williams County roads, as it has elsewhere, but Jim Arthaud, a Billings County Commissioner, said the partnerships need a legal framework for liability, licensing and supervision going forward.

National Grasslands, Wilderness Areas, Roadatoriums, and Permitoriums

From wiki:

National Grasslands are authorized by Title III of the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act. 

For administrative purposes, they are essentially identical to U.S. National Forests, except that grasslands are areas primarily consisting of prairie.

Like National Forests, National Grasslands may be open for hunting, grazing, mineral extraction, recreation and other uses. Various National Grasslands are typically administered in conjunction with nearby National Forests.

All but three National Grasslands are on or at the edge of the Great Plains. Those three are in southeastern Idaho, northeastern California, and central Oregon.

The three National Grasslands in North Dakota, together with one in northwestern South Dakota, are administered jointly as the Dakota Prairie Grasslands. National Grasslands are generally much smaller than National Forests.

From wiki, a wilderness area:

A wilderness area is a region where the land is in a natural state; where impacts from human activities are minimal—that is, as a wilderness. It might also be called a wild or natural area. Especially in wealthier, industrialized nations, it has a specific legal meaning as well: as land where development is prohibited by law. Many nations have designated Wilderness Areas, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.

From the Dickinson Press/InsideClimate News:

A legal battle is intensifying to decide if roads can be built in areas of the Little Missouri National Grasslands now managed as roadless and eligible to be protected as wilderness. 

The dispute started this summer when four North Dakota counties sued the federal government, asserting they have the legal right to build roads along section lines.

My understanding is that we have a "roadatorium" now in that area of North Dakota, which is just one step away from a permitorium on development if the area is declared a wilderness area.