North Dakota: Three Affiliated Tribes Oppose New Refinery
'Clean fuel' raises tribal debate
Residents wait for preliminary environmental report on refinery to trigger more discussion

By: Jill Schramm
Editorial Staff Writer

Mar 29, 2004

MAKOTI - Expect a lot of talk about a proposed oil refinery near Makoti in coming months.

Both proponents and opponents are planning a series of public meetings on a project that's generating both economic and environmental interest.

Residents and neighbors of the Fort Berthold Reservation are awaiting a preliminary environmental report that consultants say should be done by sometime in May. The release will trigger a 45-day comment period, during which time public meetings will be held around the reservation.

"This refinery is going to be very clean," said Bob Woolley, president of Triad Project of Utah, which is developing the plant for the Three Affiliated Tribes. "It's not haphazard. It's well managed. It's well managed economic development. Responsible design is where it's at."

The Environmental Awareness Committee of Fort Berthold is working with Refinery Reform, an environmental group, to set up meetings of its own this spring. The group is opposing construction of the $81 million plant, to be located west of Makoti.

"All of us are opposed to the building of this refinery because of the incidence of cancer and asthma that we are already dealing with. Whatever the source, whether it's industry or herbicides and pesticides, the fact of the matter is it's way too much," said committee spokesperson Jodie White of White Shield. "We just don't need anything else affecting our children. Our entire group just feels so strongly about the children and future generations and the earth itself."

Emissions from the plant will be limited because of the small size of the plant and the clean-burning fuel, said Jerry Koblitz, principal with Greystone, the company doing the environmental study. The refinery also will be built in manufacturing plants as modular units that will be brought to the site, ensuring better quality control than construction in the field, he said.

Woolley outlined some safety features that will be part of construction:

• The processing area will be paved, with curb around every unit to contain any spills.
• Surface runoff will be contained and not released into the environment unless it meets the water quality standard determined by the refinery's permit from the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Drainage around the refinery will be captured and tested to ensure it also meets established standards before it is released.
• Tanks, pipes and electrical instruments must meet a required thickness and be repaired or replaced if there is corrosion.
• Dikes will exist around each tank and around the entire containment area.
• Pollution controls will include a vapor recovery system. The project must follow guidelines of the federal Clean Air Act and not to cause air quality deterioration in environmentally sensitive areas, such as national parks.
• An air cooling system will reduce the need for water cooling.
• The plant will have on-site fire-fighting capacity, with cooperative agreements with other fire departments.
• The plant will comply with codes for withstanding natural disasters.

"All refining companies these days are very, very concerned about safety," Woolley said. "It's something that we are familiar with because we do it all the time."

He said Triad received an award this month from Chevron for five years of incident-free operation at one of its plants.

"That's very important to us," Woolley said. "It's not something we take lightly."

Makoti Mayor Lori Ostrem said the community will be looking to the environmental impact report to address pollution concerns, although the overall feeling of the community is positive toward the project.

"There are certainly some environmental concerns, but I guess that's what the government and environmental groups are for is to look into that," she said. "The engineers working with the project have certainly assured us that everything is going to be up to code and that we won't have any problems."

White said her group also looks forward to seeing specifics in the environmental report.

She said remarks of the Region 8 office of the Environmental Protection Agency about the refinery cause concern to her group. An EPA official wrote: "From our experience it is not possible to operate a petroleum refinery without some release of pollutants to surface water and groundwater. ... Groundwater and soil under the refinery will eventually become contaminated."

Denny Larson, director of Refinery Reform, said there's no state-of-the-art equipment that will eliminate air pollution from a refinery.

There are state-of-the-art refineries in Europe that produce reduced pollution, but they still have problems and create hazardous waste, Larson said. The plants operate as cleanly as they do because of strict regulations on operation and maintenance, he said. North Dakota's regulations are not nearly as strict, he said.

White said there is a concern about oversight of the refinery. The tribe currently works with the EPA on environmental matters. A portion of a proposed energy bill in Congress would eliminate EPA oversight for any tribe with an EPA-approved plan for doing its own regulation.

White said if the refinery is built, her committee would monitor information on its environmental compliance.

"If this becomes a reality, at least they will be more apt to realize that there are people out there watching," she said.

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