(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "Prairie Pulse."

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll meet Norcross, Minnesota art artist, Vicki Radel.

But first our guest joining us now is Duane DeKrey.

And Duane, I've got you from Carrington, North Dakota, you're both on the Missouri River Joint Water Board and the Garrison Diversion Conservancy District here to talk about water issues.

Always a simple subject I've been told.

No, it's never a simple subject.

But before we get started with all that, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and your background, maybe where you're originally from.

- Okay.

Well thank you John for having us.

We like to talk about Garrison diversion and its mission in North Dakota, and so we pretty much take every opportunity we can and we were very delighted when you contacted us and wanted to visit with us today.

Personally, I grew up on a small dairy and small grain farm in Central North Dakota, Pettibone, North Dakota.

At that time it was probably an average size farm in North Dakota, but it certainly wouldn't qualify these days.

Graduated from high school, did all the normal small town rural kid things four-H sports, and choir and band, and school.

And then moved on to NDSU, and I graduated from NDSU with a degree in agriculture education with a minor in military science.

So I was a commissioned second lieutenant, an infantry branch in the United States Army.

And so I guess you'd say my adult career kind of took off from there.

I returned to the farm and, and farmed for 30 years.

I was in the North Dakota legislature for 20 years, two years in the Senate and 18 in the house.

And I taught school for a couple years, not consecutively, I worked for the land Department right at the height of the oil boom when you had to plan your trips out there a month in advance because if you didn't, you couldn't get a motel room.

And so I was inspecting state property out there for state of North Dakota, and then also GPSing all the oil lines and water lines and everything else they were putting underground on state land that a lot of the contractors weren't really good about notifying the state of North Dakota that that was on their property.

So, after a stint at the Land department, I did 14 months as the deputy director of the North Dakota Game and Fish, and then I got picked up by the Garrison Diversion Board to be their general manager.

And so I guess that's kind of how I got here today.

- Well, a varied career there, but most of it here in North Dakota.

You're the general manager, you just said that.

But what is the Garrison Diversion Conservancy?

- Okay.

The Garrison Diversion Conservancy District was formed by the North Dakota legislature in 1955.

And the reason that happened is that the Pick-Sloan project, or our part of it, the Garrison diversion, was underway in being built in the state of North Dakota, and as normal with those large water projects with the federal government at the end, the plan was to turn it over to the state and then the state would run it.

Well, as you know, it didn't quite happen that way, but still we manage all the federal facilities in North Dakota connected to the Garrison Diversion unit.

That'd be the Snake Creek Pumping Plant, the McCluskey canal, 74 mile canal in the McCluskey area, turtle Lake or Turtle River, turtle Lake area, and the new Rockford Canal, which truly is a canal to nowhere.

It's never had any water put in it, but it was already built when the lawsuits with Canada and other entities took place and stopped the projects.

So now the canal is plugged at mile marker 59 because that's the continental divide.

And that was the big issue of biota transferring from the Missouri River Basin into the Hudson River Basin.

And so that is why the project got stopped.

And so for many years, Garrison Diversion, we worked with the Bureau of Reclamation and that was kind of our mission, but nothing was really happening with the project.

Well, finally, and the big problem with not developing any irrigation on the project was that the federal government to Bureau of Reclamation would only give farmers a one year water service contract.

And if you know anything about irrigation, you know how capital intensive it is to develop irrigation and what farmer in their right mind would put that kind of money into a irrigation system and only be guaranteed one year water.

So after working with the congressional delegation for many years, and with the Bureau of Reclamation for many years, we finally got the bureau to go with a 40 year water service contract.

So now de development of irrigation on the canal has been slow but steady.

But since 1993, other than about one year, we've kind of been in a wet cycle.

And so for the last, you know, 30 years we've been selling ice cubes to Eskimos.

So it's tough to sell irrigation when there's lots of water around.

And it, you know, being North Dakota, we expect that cycle to change, you know, we don't know at what point, but we know at some time.

And so that's a big part of our mission is the OM on the federal facilities in North Dakota.

And then another part is we work with the government agencies in the state that have small construction projects, projects that we don't like to compete with private industry.

So they would be projects on US fish and wildlife management areas that aren't big enough for them to put out on bids, but they still want to accomplish 'em.

So, in a way, we're kind of the federal government's construction company in North Dakota.

And so we do that.

We also work for the North Dakota Game and Fish and do projects for them.

We just finished a project up last year where we built an island for 'em south of Washburn so that they do a better job of raising ducks, try to keep the predators away from the island so they have better waterfall production.

So that's part of our mission.

And then in the very beginning of the Garrison diversion recreation was to be a big part of it.

And so, we are funded our general fund by one mill property tax, and we've remained at one mill all these years, and that brings in just a little less than $3 million income.

And that's what we run our general fund on.

20% of that goes to recreation projects within the district.

We have a 28 member counties, so we touch all four sides of the state of North Dakota.

20% of our income goes to that.

So we run two grant rounds every year and every county in the 28 county district has gotten quite a bit of funds from us for recreation projects, playgrounds and campgrounds and those types of things.

So those are kind of our main focus areas.

And of course, probably the thing that takes up the biggest amount of our time right now is the Red River Valley Water Supply Project.

And that, as everybody knows, started out as a federal project, and due to never being able to get a record of decision, we had to do a environmental impact statement, and we had to do a needs and options report, and then the next step would've been a secretary signature from the secretary of interior.

And that would've truly made it a federal project, that never happened.

And so during Senator Hoeven's stint as governor of North Dakota, he turned it into a state project.

And it was left with us because we were the ones that had had all the past knowledge of it.

And so we are in the process now of building that project for the state of North Dakota.

We are under construction.

- Yeah, well obviously have a very vast network, and responsibility across the state.

But, can you explain why the original diversion project, Garrison diversion project was never finished?

- Well, I can touch on it.

Mostly because of environmental issues.

United States Fish and Wildlife was concerned about biota transfer and the Canadian interest because, you know, it would've dumped into the Red River or the Cheyenne River, which eventually hooks up to the Red River at Horace and then goes north into Canada.

And so, they were concerned about water biota transfer of, you know, diseases and pathogens that might be in the Missouri system, that were not in the red system.

And so, the Audubon Society was very instrumental in funding the legal activities.

And so in the end, the Bureau of Reclamation and North Dakota... North Dakota didn't completely agree with what the bureau was.

In fact, we sued 'em.

But in the end, after all the lawsuits and all the dust settled, the project got stopped.

And what that meant was that it was plugged at mile marker 59, the McCluskey Canal.

And so we have the Snake Creek Pumping plant, which the embarkment that it is on forms Lake Audubon, and Lake Audubon forms the headwaters to the McCluskey canal.

And so we use the Snake Creek Pumping Plant to pump water outta Lake Sakakawea into Lake Audubon, and then we irrigate out of that water.

- So how many staff do you have on the Garrison?

- We have about 10 office staff in Carrington and that fluctuates.

And then we have about 28 to 30 O&M crew in McCluskey and that fluctuates too.

So we're usually somewhere at about 28 to 30 employees.

- Okay.

Well let's said you're general manager of that part and what is the Missouri River Joint Water Board?

- Okay.

The Missouri River Joint Water Board is made up of the counties that border the Missouri River through the state of North Dakota.

And of course, you know, anything to do with water, there's problems and there's disagreements.

And so sometimes the upstream counties weren't talking to the downstream counties, and they were unhappy with the way the river was being managed by the Corps sometimes.

And so they banded together and they formed the Missouri River Joint Board to help the counties have an entity that could manage their problems on the Missouri River as a county.

As you know, it's ran by the Corps of Engineers, and so they're kind of the link to the state for the Corps of Engineers.

Of course the State State Water Commission and the Department of Water resources is a big part of that, the dealing with the Corp.

But this was a way to band together and instead of talking to the Corp and to the state with many voices, they could speak with one voice to the Corp in the state of North Dakota.

And so that was why the Missouri River Joint Board was formed.

And it also has a big function of promoting the Missouri River and how important it is to the state of North Dakota.

In fact, when we had our water day up at the state fair this year, just about every water entity in the state of North Dakota partakes in that.

And then they usually have a booth where they give out some smack or you know, whatever trinkets and they have a question, and then after you all answer your questions, you turn 'em in at the end and then there's a drawing for a fairly larger price.

But anyway, the question this year was, where does the Missouri River start, and where does it end?

And all day long at the fair, three people got it right.

And one of those was a lady from Missouri.

And so the joint board kind of took that as that there's a lot of education that needs to be done about the Missouri River in the state of North Dakota and the importance of it.

And so that's their two main functions.

- Are you gonna tell us where it starts and where it ends, or we're gonna have to look it up?

- It starts in Montana, it ends in in Missouri.

- You recently got an award I understand that Upper Missouri Water Association Distinguished Service Award.

Can you tell us about that?

- Well, it's for people that they feel have been instrumental in helping issues on the Missouri River, and promoting the Missouri River, and you know, it's an honor to receive something like that that you know, that your peers give to you.

So, but that's basically what it is, it's overnight you didn't do something, you've been there for a while, and you've been promoting the progress of the organization.

- Well one of the things, you know, water's always an issue no matter where you live, it seems like.

Can you talk a bit about the history of water in North Dakota and then the conundrum of trying to get water to the eastern part of the state?

- Yeah, it's, you know, it was known at the time of statehood that North Dakota, if major cities along the eastern edge of North Dakota developed that in times of drought that there would not be enough water.

And so, you know, Fargo for sure in Grand Forks, to a somewhat lesser extent, have built beyond their water supply in a 30 style drought.

And so as it was stated in the federal project in 1986, the reformulation of the Garrison Diversion Act, it was a federal project, but that never came about.

And so then the state project took it over.

And so we had to redo pretty much everything had been done before, and this time we were able to get a record decision out of the Bureau of Reclamation.

And so then we started construction right after that.

So, the original pipe I think was gonna bring 160 cubic feet per second to the Cheyenne River.

This project, we went throughout the eastern part of the state and talk to all the rural systems and the urban systems, and the number we came up with this time around was 165 cubic feet per second to the central part of the state into the Cheyenne River.

And so that takes a six foot pipe, it's concrete lined, it's kind of a covered with an epoxy on the outside, and there's gonna be 125 miles of it.

And so right now we got about four and a half miles of it in, and so we got ways to go, but we are under construction and we will be bringing water to Eastern North Dakota.

- You mentioned, I think the individual rural water districts.

How important are they and what do they do?

- Well, rural individual water, rural water districts are extremely important in the state.

And the reason being of course, is not everywhere in the state has decent groundwater.

And the places that do have decent groundwater, most of that has been already permitted out by the Department of Water Resources.

So there really is a shortage in the eastern and central part of the state of a good quality groundwater.

And so, instead of all these farmers having individual wells on their farms that some had water and some didn't, and some was very poor quality water, these rural water districts were formed.

And so there's quite a few of 'em throughout the state, and they pretty much are in...

I mean, they deliver portable good water to the citizens of Eastern and central North Dakota.

And without them, they'd be very questionable how many of those farms out there would have really good water.

- Yeah.

What are the most important and sort of key water issues facing North Dakota in the upcoming years?

- Well, definitely probably the biggest one is North Dakota claiming its rights to the Missouri River.

When the Garrison Dam was closed, North Dakota, as every other state along the Missouri River, were permitted certain acre feet of water.

Now, North Dakota, like the other western states, on water law is western water law, which is first come, first serve.

So even though that water has been held in a permit, either by the state of North Dakota, or the Bureau of Reclamation, someone else could come along and would put that water to use, they could take water out of our permit because you have, it's kind of a use it or lose it scenario.

So of course, we know what the drought is doing to the western United States, the Bureau of Reclamation already has a plan to move Missouri River Water over to Colorado, and that of course is a threat to our permit.

And now South Dakota has two projects on the books to take Missouri River Water into South Dakota.

Kansas, has a mega project down and is a $4 billion project in today's dollars where they wanna recharge the Ogallala aquifer.

I mean, they tell you with a straight face, they know they're mining the Ogallala aquifer, but instead of stopping mining the Ogallala aquifer, they're looking at the Missouri River to recharge the aquifer.

So you know, external are basically our biggest threats to North Dakota because if we don't put that Missouri River to good use in North Dakota, we could lose the right to, we could be watching it flow by us and not be able to take any out of it.

- Well, Duane, we only got about a minute left.

What role does the state legislature play in helping with water issues across the state?

- They're huge.

The North Dakota legislature, which I think has done a very good job, is turning oil into water.

A big percentage of the oil extraction tax goes straight to the Natural Resources trust fund, which pays for the state's share of water out of the Missouri River.

So they're very important partner.

- Is drinking water safe in North Dakota?

- [Duane] Very safe.

- Will it continue to be, do you think?

- It is.

North Dakota's water drinking water's very safe.

We haven't had any military installations, so we haven't got too many PFIs.

- Okay.

Well, we are out of time and I know, you know, lake Sakakawea plays a huge role in the state.

Can you give us just 15, 20 seconds on that?

- Well, lake Sakakawea of course is a tremendous asset for recreation, water supply, a big economic generator.

It's just huge to the state of North Dakota.

- Well it is.

And if people want more information, where can they go?

What's the best place?

- They can contact Garrison Diversion, and we can always give them information what they're looking for.

We do have a website, and you go to either the Garrison Diversion website or the Red River Water Supply website and there's about anything on there you'd wanna know.

- Well, we'll have to have you back again and talk some more.

- Will be more than happy to John, thank you.

- Thanks for joining us today.

Stay tuned for more.

(soft music) Vicki Radel, is a mixed media artist who uses encaustic medium and cold wax to create art full of texture, depth and color.

Every piece is inspired by her love of nature in the prairie.

And each pass of the torch or roll of a prairie helps bring to life art that feeds her soul.

(enlightening music) - I like working as an artist because ideas come to me and I wanna have that come to life.

Sometimes it's frustrating, but, there just is that joy when it really does all come together.

I'm Vicki Radel, I am from the western prairie of Minnesota between Wheaton and Norcross.

And I am a mixed media artist working primarily with encaustic hot wax and cold wax and oil.

That's about right.

I always loved art.

When I first started taking classes, they were all kind of in acrylic.

I got frustrated 'cause I couldn't get what I wanted.

And then I took the encaustic class and I totally fell in love with it.

So I like how this is coming through here with that yellow.

I actually got what was in my head to the wood.

It just felt like magic.

(soft music) Encaustic, it's beeswax with resin, which makes the boiling point go up so it doesn't melt easy like beeswax does.

And then you just add different pigments to it.

And then my palate is a pancake griddle with tuna cans.

And then you put the regular bees wax in, and then this pigmented bees wax in these cans and then it's all melted liquid.

And when you apply it to the board, it gets solid really quickly.

So then you have to apply heat to get it to adhere to the board and to melt again into a nice layer.

And so it's either a heat gun, or actually prefer a torch.

It's kind of fun to be able to paint with fire.

(soft music) I go back and forth now between the encaustic and then cold wax.

With cold wax, it's still beeswax, but instead of the resin added to it, it's added a solvent to it so that it gets almost like paste.

And then you mix that With regular oil paints.

I have to work on wood because the canvas can bend and that would break the wax.

So I work primarily on wood.

I can use a pallet knife, I can use a brayer, I can use a bowl scraper, a spatula, and create a lot of nice textures, and those different aspects in my paintings.

You can layer these layers of paint and so you get this incredible depth in the surface.

(soft music) A lot of my inspiration comes from living on the prairie.

It's that peace and quiet, and I love that just wide open feel.

The prairie in the sky, like encode everything that I feel.

Often in my paintings, there's expanses of space.

I've found that I can't paint the same painting twice.

The wax has its own way of doing things.

Sometimes that's frustrating, but, mostly I like it because they're usually surprises and they kind of take me in another direction.

So it's kind of like really getting in tune with the medium and following that a bit as well as my own ideas.

The raw wood series was kind of an interesting little accident.

My husband worked at the lumber yard and one day he came home with a board that had this kind of eaten out part of it so they couldn't use the lumber.

And this is when I became a mixed media painter because what I realized is if I used the encaustic on the whole piece of wood, you wouldn't see the wood green.

And so I'd find another way to have more transparent colors so that the wood green would show through.

And so that's when I started using some wood dyes, and ink and other things.

I'd like people that look at my art to feel something, and that they resonate in some ways with the artwork that's done.

I think that's one of the reasons why the raw wood work so much better.

'Cause people can tell what it is and there's like a basicness to it and then it has like a twist.

And I think that they resonate with that because it feels familiar.

I have benefited so much from living in Minnesota, because of the generosity of the arts community.

One of the things about being an artist in a rural community, and we are in one of the least populated counties in Minnesota, is that there's not a lot of other artists.

It's hard to find the resources as you continue to move in your career.

I've joined different art galleries where you can get that kind of commiseration back and forth.

I've had some shows in the small town here, I've had shows through our Lake region Art Council.

They helped me set up my encaustic studio.

I'm glad I get to do it.

It feeds a part of me that doesn't get fed anywhere else.

- Well, that's all we have on "Prairie Pulse" for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008.

And by the members of Prairie Public.