- HERBERG CLEANING. In 2002, Anderson says Kyle Meyer, a Water Board member and sometime chairman, planned and personally surveyed and completed a cleanout of the Herberg Drain. This is a "legal" drain under Herberg Township authority. Herberg Drain empties into the Steenerson Drain, further to the east.
According to Mike Burd, Meyer set the elevations and hired Burd & Smith to conduct a cleanout of the north side of Section 11. Cactus Warner, a retired farmer and absentee landowner who now lives in Nevada, owns the northwest corner of Section 11.
Burd says his company lowered culverts between Sections 10 and 11 by 2 feet. They installed a larger culvert between Sections 9 and 10. The Andersons farm three quarters in Section 10, including the northwest quarter. Meyer farms Section 9.
Meyer directed Burd & Smith to lower a culvert for a neighbor, Dallas Boeddeker, in Section 3, which is in the same intersection as the Cactus Warner culvert. According to maps of the Steenerson Drain, Boeddeker's land in Section 3 carries no drainage assessment.
In 2008, Roger Anderson went to Cactus Warner, asking why he allowed this.
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Warner said he didn't know anything about it. Warner then wrote a letter to Herberg Township Board chairman Steve Reinpold, asking why the culverts had been lowered and the dirt piled on his land without permission. The dirt remains today.
- MUD DUMP ISSUES. Roger Anderson says that while the Water Board doesn't do what he wants, others can expedite seemingly dramatic changes.
American Crystal Sugar Co., a farmer-owned economic engine for the region, has created a series of sludge ponds near its Hillsboro, N.D., beet processing plant.
Crystal's requests involved "mud solid remediation fields" to handle mud from the bottom of its settling ponds. The three sites ranged from 138 to 150 acres in Sections 20 and 21 of Eldorado Township.
In late November 2008, the Eldorado Township, then chaired by Jason Siegert, who is now the chairman of the Traill water board, approved the cutting of a township board to replace culverts and filled up a natural ravine through the quarter and rerouted a legal drain, within three-quarters of a mile from the Goose River.
On Dec. 17, the North Dakota Health Department held a permit hearing, which was poorly attended because of confusion over the starting time. According to the Hillsboro Banner, farmer Glen Hultin, spoke during the meeting about odors and flies associated with a similar mud dump that was located near his new house.
Crystal's contractors started working on the project by Jan. 5, and the health permit came through in February.
"I guarantee that Crystal jumped through all of the hoops, with state permits and permits from us," Thompson says. "They're probably scrutinized more than anyone else, to be honest." He says the project was deemed not to have "statewide or inter-district significance."
