Battling over Water Project - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Battling over Water Project

A 150-million dollar water project for northwestern North Dakota that's being funded by selling water to the oil industry could become the focus of a lawsuit.

That was the message to state legislators today in Williston as they met to hear more about the Western Area Water Supply Project, or WAWS.
Jim Olson reports on the battle over having the government sell water in competition with independent water providers, known as IWP.

With the president of the Independent Water Providers looking on, Bob Harms of that group had a succinct recap of the situation.

(Bob Harms, Independent Water Providers) ""not well

With members of the legislature's water issues committee listening, Harms listed several complaints of the private sellers of water in the way the state-backed Western Area Water Supply Project was selling water to the oil industry. At the heart of the IPS's list of complaints? WAWS was building the capacity to sell more water than it needed to repay the 110-million dollars in loans approved by the legislature.

(Bob Harms, Independent Water Providers) "" 4 times

Harms said the legislature's move to bypass the standard way of funding water projects - through grants and control of the State Water Commission -  for WAWS should be reconsidered, so that the state agency has more control over how WAWS is deployed.

(Bob Harms, Independent Water Providers) "" (give to SWC)

But the head of the WAWS advisory committee said the structure of WAWS has worked well in helping get the huge project - whose main goal is to get quality water to towns across rural northwestern North Dakota

(Denton Zubke, WAWS Advisory Committee) ""

Was working well and would bring water to those towns less than two years after the project was approved by the 2010 legislature.

(Denton Zubke, WAWS Advisory Committee) ""

He told legislators a recent proposal from the independent suppliers that WAWS water supply depots - that each of the 12 depots offer no more than two water-pumping ports - would cripple the project's financial plan.

(Denton Zubke, WAWS Advisory Committee) ""

The head of IWP said the idea behind the two-port limit was to keep WAWS from forcing local providers out of business

(Steve Mortenson, IWP President) ""

The presentation included a warning from the IWP that if no agreement is reached with WAWS on some critical issues, a lawsuit could be expected. The next state legislature will no-doubt be debating WAWS because the original plan called for another 40 million dollar loan, and WAWS officials today said they'd need an additional 40 million dollars to meet higher-than-expected costs for the plan.  In Williston, Jim Olson, KX News.