 So, as we get started here, we've just got a few questions to start off the discussion. So, just to ask each of you, what your background is in energy development? I guess I was a lucky one to have sat in the first seat, right? I've been involved in the pipeline transmission line sector of oil and gas now for 12, almost 13 years. Initially, I was working on a project that was called the Goliath Field as a contractor for HEST that was North and South of Ray, North Dakota. And that's where I got a quick introduction to some of the leaders of the Northwest Land Owners Association, which is a fantastic group that I think is very necessary for landowners in North Dakota. And I got taken to school very quickly by those landowners. They taught me an awful lot about, you know, what they've been through up until the point I had arrived and all the reclamation that was not being done for them, mostly with well pads that were going in, and then lots of gathering lines at that point in time. There really wasn't much for gathering lines then, took tours many hours with many different landowners of their ranches, of their farms, and got to see a lot of damage that was being done to their land that's been in their family for generations that they've been trusted with to take care of for future generations. So there was definitely no question of how important they felt their role was and how important they know their role was and what they owed their families in the land to make sure that it was taken care of properly. A lot of promises were made early on by a lot of different oil companies and pipeline companies that are no longer around. And a lot of people that are no longer around and their biggest thing then was, you know, every time I turn around there's a new face coming to see me. So I couldn't commit to them that I'd be the same face the next time around, but I did make a commitment that, you know, I'm going to make reclamation my focus while I'm here because I think this is where I could have the best impact. So going back to the beginning of my involvement mostly has been with pipeline has been reclamation work. Then I started getting involved more pre planning for projects, construction feasibility, environmental studies, archaeological studies and that sort of thing just to make sure we're trying the best we can to plan the route properly from the beginning, which is I think still not done the best, but that's probably where the most impact can be had is getting the right people involved from the beginning, working with the landowner and choosing the best routes based on even what types of soils there, make sure you have give yourself the best opportunity from the beginning to have the most successful reclamation as possible. So that's about it for me pipeline reclamation and we continue with that through the Northwest Landowners Association they did recommend me to the Department of Agriculture when that Senate bill was passed. I did an interview for the job and was fortunate enough to be able to become an ombudsman for the North Dakota Department of Agriculture Pipeline Restoration and Reclamation Program. It's been a great program. We've been a help a lot of people. I just wish more landowners would complain because we know that they're out there. It's not like when a pipeline goes across a tract that the issues on this track don't continue on to the next tract of land in a lot of landowners in North Dakota, they're tough people and they'd rather take care of it themselves and they're not they don't complain as much as they probably should. So hopefully we get some more landowners that involve the program. So thank you. Thanks much. Good lead in. My background in energy development, my family, all four of my sets of great grandparents homesteaded in Mackenzie County between 1906 and 1911. Some of that land is still a part of our operation today. So we've been there well over 100 years and I've seen a lot of changes come and go and had the opportunity to live through the start of the buck and then make it to where we're at today and like everybody in this room that was involved in it, learned a lot along the way and hopefully we'll have a little better handle on how to proceed forward based on what we learned in those years. Through that process, we had a lot of pipeline development on our land. We're currently past 40 miles of pipeline on our land. If you figure the right way, that's 400 acres of damaged land that's in reclamation of some type or another. So a very large impact to one single operation and we're not extreme by any means. There are many of our neighbors that are in the same situation. So those pipelines, you know, oil, gas, saltwater, fresh water. Some of them dating back the earliest one in 1985, which I was actually working for a pipeline company myself at that point in time and was part of the crew that put that pipeline in and into this day hasn't leaked. So I'm available for consulting fee. So a lot of experience on a pipeline end of it and good to bad and the ugly and hopefully we'll get into some of that discussion today. And along with that, you know, what our community looks like today and all the good things that we have because of what's happened to us. So, Marcia. Hey, thank you. I guess my background in energy development itself really isn't a lot because I'm a family and consumer science agent for the NDSU Extension service. So of course, we learn about the agriculture sector and all of that in our job. That we're very familiar with and working with farmers and ranchers and community. So that way I'm very much involved. And also my family ranches north of Watford City. So getting involved personally there too. But a lot of the community aspects is mostly where where I came in as the background there, just learning about that, the effects of the energy development on the community and in in Watford City and in Kildare as I used to work in Dunn County too. So that's where that's where my background all, you know, started. So my background in energy development is from the research side of things. So I've conducted research throughout the course of my career on various renewable energy technologies was covered in the introduction. But I think relevant to the topic here is that through the course of conducting that research, which is firmly based and applied ecological science and trying to figure out operational solutions on the ground that has a lot to do with working with people. So I was out in the field and, you know, habitually interacting with, for example, loggers and if you're talking about forest bioenergy or the technicians that were consistently working on the wind turbines at the wind facility where I was conducting research, I've been involved in studies that address solar energy development both before during and after construction, all three of those. So I've been involved in interacting with construction crews and things of that nature in terms of being able to conduct research and better understand sort of the operational realities of energy development and then nesting that within the science to get results that are actually relevant to the folks putting things on the ground, right? And then there's a bunch of stakeholders involved in terms of funders, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Energy, state agencies and so on. So I've also interacted with those sets of folks on the social side in terms of understanding where different groups of people are coming from, what they'd like to know in terms of the research and then combining that with interacting with people on the ground, which I think is a big missing link. I'm sure y'all might have some opinions of academia, but don't worry, I do work in the field and interact with people actually doing things. I don't sit in an ivory tower and write about stuff. So I'll leave it at that. So I'll introduce myself. So Shannon, make your own apologies. Couldn't get there today. I was more nerve wracking to even try to get to the airport this morning. But the planes apparently are still taking off and landing to some degree at this point, but I appreciate the last minute accommodation of everybody there and wish I could be there in person. My background in undergrad studied natural resource management with an emphasis on development for tourism. So hiking, camping and the like across Colorado, so in the field, in that capacity, doing the good work of taking surveys, interacting with users, interacting with agencies about the use of resources for the purpose of tourism. It wasn't until law school that energy really peaked my interest as a primary driver of social and economic impact across the globe. And so energy development really became and resource management in development became a passion of mine. And I was lucky to learn from the governor at the time in the state that I was in law school that there are three domestic energy exporting states. That's North Dakota, Wyoming and Texas. And so if you want to have a job in energy development, that's probably one of the three states that you're going to have a good bet of getting in to the industry. And North Dakota was at the top of my list. I don't do heat very well. So Texas was at the bottom of my list. And I was lucky to get a job in North Dakota. I built a energy practice for the firm that I started at and worked in primarily transactional and transportation sector surrounding energy and was just fascinated by really learning in North Dakota legacy is one of the most vibrant vibrant attributes, I would say, of the state and of the the citizens of the state. And so that is something that you'll hear me touch on kind of throughout in terms of response to some of these questions. I worked in private practice for about four years, primarily in oil and gas in that sector. I then was at the University of Wyoming for about two years, working in the primarily employment and so took a little bit of break from development and then came back to energy development at Minn Kota and at Minn Kota. I manage environmental for them from a compliance standpoint, which supports our transmission side of the house in development, but also our generation side of the house in our generation development. One of the primary projects that I work on is a pioneering industry. So we get the benefit of learning from oil, gas and other natural resource development in the past to implement best practices. And that is something that we're fortunate to have. We're also, you know, being pioneering. We're learning every day how to how to do things better or where there are gaps in past experience that we need to figure out a solution that can satisfy a number of different prongs that we take a look at before we make a decision. So I interact with everybody from landowners across the kitchen table to, you know, federal agencies in DC to help them understand what is actually happening in North Dakota and, you know, state agencies, local agencies, contractors and even the finance in the background who have to understand why we're doing what we're doing and why it's important for North Dakota to be doing it. Look forward to the discussion today. Right, we'll start with, actually, let's pass it to Marsha there. And we'll start with the next question. How has energy development affected local communities in Western North Dakota? Well, hugely. Wapford City, we had a population of about 1,200 people and we grew to around 10,000 in a short amount, about 10,000 in a short amount of time. So it's really wild. You know, before things got going, you couldn't even stand on the corner of Main Street and talk to each other because it was too loud with all the semis and trucks going in constant traffic. And it was probably half mile to a mile mile long traffic to get into Wapford City. And so so it was wild. It affected communities hugely. We had kids from probably 50 states and 20 countries in the schools in Wapford City and the median age was age 30, you know, started out all of a sudden to be about age 30. Our schools are still crowded and, you know, still trying to catch up and maintain, I think. It's it's really it's really busy. So it's it's affected them a lot. But I think we've come a really long way to we have a lot of things going on to help to help, you know, our communities maintain and grow and be vibrant. And so it's it's been really fun to see all the things develop. So I don't know if you want me to talk more about it or. Yeah, let's have Jason. So they say what's important is not what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you. And that statement is extremely true for Watford City and in every small town like it, I guess that, you know, you went from a time in our economy where the Bakken was the only thing happening in the whole country. Nobody had a job building houses in Florida. Nothing was going on anywhere else. And so here we are, you know, just ranch families that are pretty happy with the way things are. Small community businesses pretty happy with the way things are. We were pretty proud of our town and the things that we'd done and it and achieved and had a nice place to live. And the school system was doing OK for small town North Dakota. And all of a sudden we're just flooded with thousands of people that are just tickled to finally be getting a paycheck and they're upsetting our our way of life and changing our world forever in ways that some of us really didn't appreciate. And the conflict came when they didn't understand they were on top of the world. This is the best job they ever had. And they didn't get it that what was good for them was really destroying what we'd worked our lives to build. And so it took a long time for those two groups to come together and and work toward making things better for everybody moving forward. And once that happened, you know, there are two things. So for those of you everybody in the room that's that's young enough that you think that this is the first oil boom, it's not. I was in school, graduated from high school in 1982. And that oil boom was very, very similar, quick and impactful to our community the same way as the Bakken oil boom. I granted the Bakken boom on a much grander scale. But the one core difference in those years that separated that in the eighties, every person that came for a job in the oil field in Watford City called a 14 by 70 trailer house with them and his family was with them. And that was really the big difference because it was mostly single men or men with their families left at home and we were missing that family component early on. I said oftentimes that, you know, if everybody that worked here would bring their wife and kids here. Most of our problems would go away. And when that finally happened, they did go away. But we were then presented with a whole host of new problems like you drive down the street and there's family after family pushing a double wide stroller down the street and they probably got two or three on leash. And it's like, we're going to have to build a school to put all these kids in. And that's a great problem to have. Those kind of problems are easy to deal with. And we had some, you know, had right people at the right place in our leadership in our county and we're able to build the school. I remember going to vote when we've made the first vote to build the first high school and it was a landslide in favor. Everybody in the community knew that we had to do this. We saw what the costs were and but the risk to our community to not do it was just too great. So, you know, you drive into a lot for today and we have a lot of schools and believe it or not, the schools are all full and we probably need to build some more. And one of the greatest compliments that we get when people from all across the state come to Watford City for a sporting event or a school activity. And they are really impressed with what happens no matter whether from small town, Eastern North Dakota or big town or wherever. They just said, man, I wish we had a place like this where we live. So that's a compliment to the community and the leadership that we've had. One of the heat of the boom when we were having some change over in our county commission, some guys were retiring. And I asked at one of the commissioner forums the question and so why do you wanna do this? And one of the candidates that ended up getting elected similar to myself, their family been here forever. And he said, because I wanna make sure that our community is a good place to live and work for everyone. Those that have been here forever and those that are just starting their careers here. So that kind of mentality is what's helped us get along and would benefit anyone to think like that. Yeah, I'll maybe offer just what I've seen. So with Minn Kota, we over 50 years ago established one of our primary generation sources in center North Dakota. Before that, center was a smaller town, didn't really have, didn't have a school, didn't have kind of, or its own school. It was a composite school of a number of different counties or communities within the county. With the development back in the late 60s, early 70s around coal units, you saw kind of that initial wave of rural development happen and a number of communities were interested in incentivizing the companies to have their employees remain and stay. And I think that generally is a really important tenant for developers to carry with them is that these are communities and you're going to need to realize that you may be developing there, but they're every day living there and dealing with the consequences of development coming in and operations into the future. And it's easy to show up on occasion and have to deal with the problems, but it's a lot harder when your community has to deal with them day to day at the restaurant, at the coffee counter, at the post office. And it's really important to understand that and to communicate a level of respect for that legacy because you got to think about what would happen if somebody came into your community wherever it is and propositioned a major change. Change is not easily come by in any stretch or in any part of anybody's life. And it can have positive impacts, but a lot of times that comes with the pain of growth and the pain of change. And proper planning and consideration for what is important to that community is going to be the make or break in the impacts that go forward. I'll say from our newer projects development, what we've seen is those that have come before us where they've done right have given us an opportunity to continue on that trust that's been built for new development, but those that have left a week of damage and disrepair, we are having to really pay for the sins of others and that's understandable and it's absolutely an appropriate response. Once you've breached trust, it's really hard to earn that back. And even if you weren't the one to do the damage in the first place. So I think there's consequences directly from projects, but I think there's even broader reaching consequences for development across the spectrum. So I think we'll start off by all of that here as an industry representative, how was the approach to engaging community members impacted by the development? The approach had to change, justifiably so. I think the decent companies realized very quickly that the impacts that they were having on the communities with the development of their pipelines and tried to find different ways where they could contribute to the community to help with rec centers and pools and things to help try to make communities better in their own way, but nothing could ever make up for some of the things. Just that whether a good company or a bad company, when you're installing pipelines and the weather conditions aren't optimal, you have people like, have been referred to that are coming in from all over the country and maybe used to doing things a certain way in Texas or used to doing things a certain way in Missouri or wherever it is that they came from. Well, it's different here. The land is different, a lot less topsoil in a lot of places. So a lot of these companies were coming in from the outside. And they had their kind of SOP on the way that they dealt with communities and the way they dealt with different issues, which was they had to change quite a bit here. As far as specific goes, it needs to go far beyond grants, because that was one of the biggest ways they first were able to make a difference. How can we really impact the infrastructure for the better because at first infrastructure, they were destroying infrastructure, the roads that were here that are gravel, we're getting beat up badly. And there was no budgets put together as far as how do we fix roads that we're destroying? How do we get our contractors that are contractors and contractors not you stay with the transportation plans to make sure that certain roads that you're not supposed to be on that you're not on. It was a very long process and it was unfortunately they had to learn the hard way. And that's why I think the companies that were doing the right things are still around companies that weren't, it became too expensive or too much as they would say, brain damage to do business because they didn't want to pay for the impact that they were having. So I guess overall is in then forming community outreach departments within companies where that's their focus. How can we come into these communities and make a difference? What actually makes a difference? Is it fixing roads or are we touched them or not? Is it a lot of investments been made and I think this is one of the areas where it's been the best that I've seen impact has been on your rural fire departments and police departments and sheriff's departments where what equipment do they need to help not only in an incident with the pipeline company but what equipment can they have that will help them serve their community better? Whether it be, I mean, even recently I've been seeing a lot of the grant money that's been going off for drones and stuff like that. Well, that also brings drone education and a lot of farmers are starting to use those for different types of agricultural practices. I think a lot of that technology came in as a sideline. I'm starting to ramble, but yeah, I think the biggest way they had to change their approach is what will actually help versus what we think will help or what's helped elsewhere. So quick liken, will it let anybody else that wants to respond to here? It's a partnership mentality. There are still, yes, there are companies that just believe they have a right to be there and don't have to pay anybody for anything. Fortunately, that's by far the minority anymore and the companies that we work with and we view them as partners and that comes from our agricultural heritage. You know, we never do anything in agriculture by ourselves. We have a veterinarian, we have an agronomist marketing people and suppliers of equipment and inputs and we all view them as our partners in our business. And I think that's the way that we're starting to get the relationship with some of the oil side of it from a landowner perspective, we're partners with you. If you've got 20 miles of pipeline on me, we're gonna be partners for a long time. So we need to figure out how to get along so that we both have a good life and most of the people that I deal with have that mentality. So that was a big hurdle to overcome at the beginning and we're in a much better place today. And I have to talk a little bit about some of the things that they've done for youth organizations like 4-H. We received wonderful, wonderful support for 4-H, for STEM work and for the food pantry. We haven't talked about that. We have a large number of people that use the food pantry and that is very, very well supported. I chair the advisory committee for that and it's really, really nice the support we receive. So we're really grateful for both the volunteer and the brand of things. They volunteer for organizations, help us, sponsor us for many different things and it's wonderful. Well, I'm not an industry representative, but I can give you a little bit of insight into my experience with renewable energy. And I don't know about any renewable energy company that gave the community drones. I think there's a, it's interesting to hear about this and the kind of interface between the development and communities. And what I'd say is that in my experience in New York State, for example, there's different, for solar anyway, there's above a certain energy production that goes to the state level, but below that it's the communities that decide whether they want solar development in their town or not. And a lot of times they're making those decisions without a lot of information. So as in the research community, we're trying to provide information and Cornell has an extension office that's designed specifically for renewables. It seems like there's something going on here similar for oil and gas. And so in that situation, I think there's a lot of cases where the companies are sort of getting the communities to buy in to the solar development, maybe promising some things that they don't necessarily know that they're gonna be able to follow through on. Some of that has to do with the nasancy of some of the, what I'm realizing is reclamation practices for renewables similar to what's happening with oil and gas. But it's effectively been termed greenwashing. I don't know if anybody's heard about that, but it's basically green energy companies coming into communities, promising certain things, pollinator friendly, solar, bike paths, whatever it might be. And then as time goes on, they get the approval by the community and it's kind of a crapshoot whether they're following up on that or not. Some of it's because they don't know how to do it. Some of it's because it's not possible. And some of it has to do with the fact that the developers rarely are the operators. So the developers are flipping these facilities to operators. So just offering a little background on what we're seeing in the renewable energy sector. But I think there's a lot of similarities in terms of community engagement, you know, the good, the bad and the ugly, I guess. Yeah, so just from, I guess, an industry standpoint, just to touch on some of the things that Matt and Jason just spoke to. And I think sitting across the table and having a face-to-face conversation is necessary. But we have a great group of right-of-way managers here at Minn Kota. And we internally always talk about the thousand hours. It takes a thousand hours of conversation to work with anybody in our communities to gain that trust and respect. And so we go in with an expectation of its quality, not speed. You know, building into our project sufficient time to engage with that community, understand the concerns that the community might have. Their background and experience with development is critical. And really hearing them out and continuing to hear them out throughout the process. I'd say, you know, to the last comment, you know, Steve made it of, you know, developers coming in and setting expectations and not meeting them. That's another, you know, item that Matt, you know, hit on of, you have to be transparent and you have to be upfront with what you can commit to and have those tough conversations. If the ask is something more than you know you can deliver, there's very few things that are certain in life and you have to be honest and transparent. That's the fastest way to damage your reputation is to set an expectation that you cannot follow through on. And then the third piece, you know, Jason brought up a really, really important point which is, you know, understanding where you are starting with a community and understanding that stakeholder value that that community has for you and continuing to repeat internally with my project team here at Minn Kota on our projects that we do, we always say, you know, we're making decisions and we communicate this to our land ownership. Our projects are 20 plus year investments, whether they be transmission lines, resources, or projects like Project Tundra that we're working on. They're 20 plus years at length and when we're making project decisions, the hierarchy goes, you know, what's good for the project? What is the project need? The second is what's good for our stakeholders and our stakeholders are our member owners of our cooperative and our landowners and our communities. Those are our stakeholders in our project. And so that's really number two, right? We always think about, you know, those two are the highest priorities in our decision-making process. And then number three is what's good for the industry, right? We always ask ourselves that last piece because I think when we lose sight of that, we can end up setting expectations too high for communities or we end up leaving a mess for everybody else behind us if we don't think about the industry and development there. So I think, you know, approach to engagement, I think what I've seen go wrong is you don't have that face-to-face connection and you don't have that respect for the value that those community members play in your success or failure. A project will 100% of the time fail if they ignore the community. If the community is not successful, your project won't be successful and that is at the very core. More important than getting enough money together to build for all the permits that you need, you need to have that community support or you'll fail every single time. Are there any projects that didn't go as planned? How will be a plan differently now in hindsight? So, continue with your analysis. Yeah, so I'm happy to pick this off. I mean, I think the maybe tongue-in-cheek answer is projects never go as planned. I don't think I've ever had a project go as we planned it to go. That makes part of project development exciting, but I think one thing that I've learned from working on a project that is a pioneering project, kind of ahead of a lot of others that are coming behind us, is that we might have underestimated everybody's understanding of their role and significance in development or regulation to say it better. I think that's one piece that we might have missed from a local standpoint is helping along the education of what is the regulatory framework of this new type of industry? Who are we regulated by? At what levels are we regulated and what are the things that are covered within those frameworks? So from a hindsight standpoint, law and policy tends to follow reality and in our instance with carbon capture and sequestration, law and policies actually been a bit ahead of the curve because again, we've been able to, in the legal space, been able to rely upon lessons learned with oil, gas development and environmental regulation but where we have potentially fallen short is as developers realizing that we do have that advantage of maybe clarity of regulation and certainty of regulation but who's communicating that down to the local level? Whose job is that to communicate it down to the local level? And that's a gap that we've acknowledged and recognized and we're certainly working to try to correct that course, I would say. Yeah, I'd have to agree. Not aware of too many projects that went out when they were planned. And I guess that that starts off with, maybe not the proper plan to begin with. And I think that ties into a lot of the questions that we've already answered is starting off with the right plan and doing the proper work on the front end and having the same people involved on your planning on the front end that are gonna have to deal with the repercussions of the result of the plan after the fact. Route planning and projects that I'm thinking of is key and a lot of times the companies get hung up on, well, it's gonna be more expensive to go that route or they're so intent on not being landlocked in and not having to deal with a certain landowner, which that landowner might've been right. Might've had all the good reasons of why you shouldn't go across that piece of property because of the conditions that exist and so on. So I think companies have, I think gotten a lot better at that, proper planning to begin with has always been a challenge and that's one thing I've been beating the drum since day one. And I was always coming into a project when it was too late. I come in at the end when there's damage that needs to be fixed. And if I could only, I've always said so many times if I could only have been there in the pre-planning construction feasibility phase, that's where you're saving money in the long run. You might save money, put the pipe in the ground but you're gonna cost yourself millions of dollars on the back end, reclaiming it time after time. Also picking the right resources for local resources for contractors just because it's a company that's got an MSA with you that you've been doing business with for a while doesn't mean that they know the best way to reclaim. I find the most success I've found for proper reclamation is using some of those landowners that have the heavy equipment, have the yellow iron to do the job right on the back end. So staying local with those people that are in the communities that understand what has to be done. And I think one last thing that I can say is, we hear a lot about compliance, right? We've already talked a lot about compliance. Well, those boxes that you're supposed to check as a company are there for a reason. And I think too many companies get into the habit of just gonna get the check in the box. We get approved to these regulators and these auditors that we're checking that box. And here's our policies and procedures and here's we're following them and we're checking the boxes to show that we're following the procedures that we're supposed to. I think they lose sight of, okay, let's take a look at why that check is, that box is even there for us to check. You know, what's the purpose behind it? You know, why do we need to have, for example, a real easy example, why do we have to have the contact data in our database as current for all landowners in all tenants on say a large natural gas pipeline? Because if there's an accident and you have to notify people quickly in a half mile radius of that pipe or a mile radius of that impact point on a pipe, you better make sure that that information is accurate. So test that information, make sure it's not, yep. We sent out mail and we didn't get a return piece of mail. Make sure you have the staff on hand to call and follow up and know those landowners because a lot of those landowners are also who, you're about to see responders. Okay, so just that's the biggest thing, that communication with the community for beginning to end, learn from the landowners that know a lot more than you do as a company coming into their neighborhood. The water city seems to have adapted well to the community needs during that high development period. What contributed to the successful development at the kind of New York City planning level? What caused this success? We did a strategic plan to start with, you know, and so that, so at the top of the list there came quality of life. And so city and county, I think slipped in and I contribute them to a lot of the success that went on. It started from the city and the county with development of many projects which continue today, okay? Schools handling things through the schools. We have two elementary schools now, they're about full. So something else is gonna have to be done in the near future. We have a lot of things going on. We have a Hispanic advocacy group of North Dakota. Now that's been developed for the Hispanic population, we have a cultural fair going on every year. Just a lot of things there, the Long Ex Arts Foundation developed a lot of cultural things. Just a lot along that way. We have daycare. We have a one, Wolfpup One, which is right downtown, houses 200 kids, Wolfpup Two, which is east of town and we'll be opening houses, 180 kids. And then Alexander, the city of Alexander is building or in Alexander, there's another daycare going to open with 70 youth. And again, I think city and county helping all that come through. So there's a lot more. But it starts I think with city and county in our area. A lot of things coming together at the right time, I guess. But it's all, one of the things I was at a meeting year a week ago and somebody was talking about how they'd been to Watford in 2008 and comparing it to what it is today. And their comments to the effect that while in 2008, there wasn't any people here. Nobody was working here. It was nobody at the restaurants and when he went to eat dinner and in his eyes, what's gone today is just a way better situation. And probably what enabled us to get to where we're at today is because in 2008, we were already more than 10 years into a full-time economic development coordinator that had a lot of experience under his belt and was able to carry that into the next 10 years and was responsible largely for a lot of the good things that happened in our community. But he also doesn't realize that in 2008, we were awful proud of our town just as we're proud of it today. And so that attitude in the community, when you have that kind of strength in your community to carry you forward through all the adversity and people with the vision and the county leadership and the city leadership that we can see where we need to get to. We just need to find a path. And we were fortunate to have that kind of leadership on all levels. You also have to remind yourselves so McKinsey County didn't have any county zoning when this thing all happened and it was probably 15 or 14 before we actually had zoning. So on the positive side, we weren't hamstrung by any old archaic rules. So we made up ones that fit the situation that we were living in. And so maybe that was easier for us to do that, I don't know, but you put that all into the mix and think about the thousands and thousands of man hours that went into developing that and getting a zoning committee to start working on getting this under control and taking some hard stands, building housing as housing becomes available, we non renew the temporary workforce housing permits, not easy things to do, but forces everybody in the right direction. So making those hard choices and having the right people in places is largely responsible and then building on a community that had a lot going for it to start with. What challenge did the individual landowners and owners and how were these concerns addressed? Boy. How much time we have, right? Good cop, bad cop. Okay, so you can't see the screen or what challenges did individual landowners encounter? I'm gonna try to keep it more towards the reclamation side of things because there's so many challenges that go so far beyond the pipe within communities and families and neighbors and everything else that this kind of change brings. Obviously some of the challenges that landowners that I've had to deal with and they can probably tell you a lot more than I can, but just right away, it's going across their property that has been disturbed and the list of issues is long, whether it be mixing of soil and nothing will grow, whether it be noxious weed invasions because they didn't get cover crops or something down before contour issues or a big thing where you have farmers that are trying to raise their combines across a right-of-way that's extremely rough, damaged equipment. And I know there's quite a few pipelines that went in when it was wet conditions when they put the backfill. Can't really do that when it's that wet. They did a lot of the winter. So a lot of times what had happened is we've run into a lot of where skids that were holding the pipe, you know, off the ground, floated away, partially buried and were underwater. And then as things become drier and farmers are trying to reclaim more of their land, they're running into skids and matting as well. Sure, you're all familiar with the heavy mats that they put down so they can get across wet areas and those get half buried. And you know, you run a drill or you run a piece of equipment into a mat that's seven foot buried with only a foot hanging out. You're gonna do some damage. Dust issues that again, prevent growth in yields, health issues for cattle and things of that nature. I mean, there's been a lot of challenges I could go on and on. Those are just some that we encounter. And you know, I think that's why the Northwest Landowners Association got together. There's been a great resource to help landowners get some of these things put into the reason and the front end to protect them on the back end. So, you know, they have some recourse to get some of these things taken care of. But, you know, I think that's why they pushed the Senate bill so hard to get the pipeline restoration and reclamation program started. So there's some way to turn, you know? So there's a, you know, a third party that can come in that's neutral that has industry experience and has reclamation experience that, you know, can try to come up with a good mediation to what's the right way to get this fixed. Hopefully that answers the question. Now we're really gonna hear the real story. So I think for me that the most challenging thing was the constant demand on your time. There was somebody in our yard every day for five years wanting something from me. And for somebody that's not used to seeing people more than the once a week you maybe go to town that gets a little taxing after four years, you know? And how you react to that. And Matt mentioned in earlier comments about the rotation in the deal. Well, I got to the point where, you know, we maybe signed an easement with somebody the third time when I go, so what's your name? You look like you might stick around for a while now, but so the people, I mean, they'd drive in the yard, they'd be your guard and leave and tell you what they needed and sometimes they'd barely get out to the mailbox and somebody else would be coming in wanting exactly the same thing for a different company. You know, so their communication on their end was not very good, but that constant demand on your time from those people contacting you for easement right away, fix this, fix that, whatever they wanted, they wanted. And then along with that, the extra demand for the people that were new to the area and just didn't respect our property the way we respect our property, we had to be on every corner of our property every day because somebody drove through a fence on our property every day for at least five years straight. So every day you have to be in every corner and fix whatever fence needed to be fixed or the neighbor would call or the sheriff would call and your cows are out. And so if you skipped a day, I guarantee you you were gonna get a call from somebody. So that added to the constant pressure that you were under for the demands on your time. So that was probably the hardest part to deal with for me, the good part about all of that pressure is that the good people for the companies that had the right people in place that took the time and understood what you were doing and how valuable your time was, we built great relationships with those people and those companies. So it was your time to shine, so to speak. But the one thing that maybe hasn't changed from those times and since we have a room full of oil companies, never once has a land man been in my yard wanting an easement or whatever he wants from me and said, but don't worry, you've got three, four weeks to take care of this. Everybody wants it yesterday. Everybody had one in my yard last week, we're in a hurry, we gotta get this done. Well, if you do that, you should have started earlier. So the process takes as long as it always takes. So just a little word of advice. Okay, in the extension office, we heard a lot of what Jason just says right now. So he's telling the truth. It happened to everybody, it seems like. And then personally, I didn't have the people, I lived in town, but our land up north where our pasture land was, yeah, I dealt with a lot of calls and they got annoying. But some people were really nice and really good, but a lot of the calls were really, it got annoying. So, but yeah, huge, huge problems with people trespassing the nuisances and then the people being in your yard when they shouldn't be there. And people trespassing, people, my son lives north of town and one day someone just came walking up into his yard and he said, I don't know who they were or what they were doing, but they were like down by the barn, you know? And so that weird stuff like that. Hey Jason, how are you getting paid on? That sounds like it's, that's like a project management position, man. You gotta be, that's like a hundred K a year. So that's one of the comments one of my neighbors made. We're not farmers and ranchers anymore. We're access managers. Yeah, I thought I just shared kind of a concept that circles around the academic and somewhat practitioner community. And that's just NIMBY. I mean, y'all ever heard of that? Not in my backyard. So that's something that comes up and there are social scientists studying it and it does influence siting of solar energy in New York. That's already been proven. And I think, you know, it harkens back to my days, but it was about 2010 I was in Wisconsin and working at a wooden facility there doing research on birds and bats. And one of the things that's happening is that these are, it's an agricultural community and there are these parcels and landowners were agreeing to have wooden turbines put on their property, but it was in the very back corner of their property farthest away from their house. And then meanwhile it was basically right on top of their neighbor's house and things like that. And it really kind of dismantled the community and there didn't seem to be any sort of oversight or management in terms of the siting of these individual wind turbines. So I just thought I'd mention that. And then just a backtrack on a quick thing about planning. I'm gonna touch on this during my talk tonight, but I think some things in terms of, you know, how did you plan it? How did it not work out? I think there's really high value in acknowledging environmental considerations on the front end. I worked at a solar facility in the Mojave Desert. It's called the Ivanpa Soil Electric Generating System. At one point it was the largest solar facility in the world, concentrating solar power facility that is. And what ended up happening is they kind of slacked on the front end in terms of the environmental considerations, started doing the construction, turns out there's 10 to 15 times more federally endangered desert cortices there than they thought and ended up costing them about eight and a half million dollars to deal with all that. There's a whole captive rearing program, reintroduction program, consultants, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the whole nine yards. And the whole thing could have been avoided by kind of tackling some of those environmental considerations, regulations on the front end. So I'd imagine that maybe some of that might apply in these circumstances as well. Yeah, the only thing I was gonna add is so we've tried to head off this type of situation by simply deploying common sense. How would you wanna be treated and treat others as you would wanna be treated notion? And it's kind of the golden rule thing, right? And as a company, I think, look, we're a cooperative. So we're made up of the communities that we serve. So I think that does put us in a unique position to ask ourselves, how would we feel being faced with this? Another thing that I have emphasized with our right-of-way group is handing out my contact information so that the landowner doesn't just have that face-to-face. So if they're getting ticked off with the person that's right in front of them, they have another point of contact to call. And that has been utilized. And we've headed off some issues by doing that, giving them a second outlet to go through, somebody else to contact at the company. And then the last thing that I think is really important is we wanna deal with educated, informed landowners. Those are the best parties to deal with. And making sure that they understand that if something goes wrong, they have paths for recourse. The Ombuds program is a great example of that or who at the agency is responsible for this. And that's oftentimes why agencies require their notice to have their contact information in there. And we ask our right-of-way group to make sure that they highlight that with landowners. That if you have a problem, we'd certainly like to be that first phone call, but you do have recourse through these other avenues. To me, that alleviates a lot of the frustration if landowners have an understanding of where they can go if their needs aren't being met, although we don't ever wanna get to that point, but they have a right to know that and they deserve to understand what their recourse and what their action can be. What are the social implications of environmental issues associated with energy development, such as the air, water quality, why this fluid landscape changes? What have you seen in your experiences as the social implications of this environment? I'll give this one a whirl, given that it relates to environmental issues. So I think, just taking a step back, there's been a history of energy production and energy use in the United States. And oftentimes energy is used, not where it is produced. And I think that oftentimes results in the disenfranchisement of rural communities. Oftentimes these larger scale energy development, at least with renewables, it's occurring largely outside of the built environment. And so the social implications are really falling on the folks where the development's actually occurring, even though a lot of that energy is being effectively exported. In terms of how we characterize different levels of environmental ramifications associated with energy development, I think it to some extent depends on the scale of a given project and the conglomeration of projects all put together. So as an example, it can scale all the way up to health implications, for example, and oftentimes they're unintended consequences and really things that you wouldn't even necessarily think about for instance, solar development in the desert, kicking up dust, and the next thing you know, you got this weird fever that's associated with the dust and people are breathing it in. And it's not just, it's the communities, but it's also the workers and things of that nature. But I will also mention that we're in the process now of conducting research, and I'll talk about this later on as well, in California, in Fresno County, where there's industrial scale solar energy development going on, there's a lot of salt affected ag lands and selenium affected ag lands that are essentially decommissioned, there's a lot of dust. And it's one of the worst places for air quality in the United States. And I think it's kind of a two-way street, like there could be instances where energy development can actually add to those problems through the construction process or the mismanagement of the construction process. But what we're starting to look into is, okay, well, if there's problems with dust and you put a 6,000 acre, not actually this one's a 9,000 acre solar facility. What does that mean in terms of maybe potential benefits? So I don't think it necessarily has to be positive or negative, oftentimes it's both, but it's possible that energy development can actually help facilitate or lessen the impact of some of these environmental issues that come to play that might be associated with other land cover such as intensive agriculture. And then I'll just briefly mention that there is this concept of ecosystem services. It's also been called nature services to people. There's lots of different names for it, but basically it's like what is nature good for? And there's an interface between energy development and nature because energy development takes place within ecosystems. So a lot of discussion around social implications stems from better understanding the services that ecosystems can provide and how they're affected by energy development. And I think when you think about it through that lens, it becomes a lot more holistic in nature. And then I'll end by saying in terms of landscape change when we talk about, and this might not be as applicable to the well paths, but probably more so the pipelines, when you have disturbance from energy development that results in land use change, land use change essentially alters the functionality of the ecosystem in which it takes place. And that can in turn have lots of social implications stemming from things like people just don't wanna look at it to health issues, to a reduction of ecosystem services. So yeah, change, just everything is different, but so environmentally dust on the roads was at the beginning, everybody was choking on dust and it was unbearable. And we live right by a major hall route county road and everything we owned was covered with dust and that impact alone. So the county road goes through our place for four and a half miles. That dust trail off of the road made its way between half and three quarters of a mile both sides of the road cattle wouldn't graze grass. And we didn't really realize how significant that impact was on weaning weights and gains and things like that. One day we were moving cattle from about four miles from the road and a nice fall morning pleasant ride just pretty Yellowstone-esque type deal. Everybody's happy and those lead cows hit that dust line and there was no wind that day. And we didn't have a huge bunch of cattle with 150 head maybe. And when the lead cows hit that dust line dust just then walking in the grass it just started mushrooming up out of there. And by the time we got the last cows and the riders into that you couldn't see the rider 20 yards away from you. That's how much dust and environmental impact there was. So solution to only mag chloride our county began that program and that road is currently a paved one of the paved roads in the county and the pavement is really the only answer to being able to hold them. And it just takes a lot of money to do that and it takes time for that to work itself through the system and get back to the county level to be able to do that. But so that was a huge problem. The noise pollution, all the trucks and everything. And so it just, and again, one of the reasons why we probably have more pipeline on our place than a lot of folks is we live right on that main hall route and the more stuff we can put down that pipeline the better my life is there's less trucks on the road. So, and that's a big, big part of making everything work and it's safer in the pipe and then that makes us safer on the road. So those things all come together and our solutions to a lot of problems. The biggest change on the landscape is just the massive amount of locations and drill sites out there. My nephew and my oldest son are, I think they're seven years apart, eight years apart in age and my nephew is older and he took his senior picture on the hill above my dad's place. And just a beautiful Western North Dakota scenery picture out behind him and eight years later, my son took the same picture. There's 15 oil wells in the background of that picture. So that part of it is, you know that's something we have in our memory that's never going back to the way it was. So, but that's a social impact. Some people are really upset and miss that and others see it that that's just changed that we have to get used to and it isn't necessarily good or bad, it's just different. So. I think he covered most of it. That you know, you do, you do as far as social impacts, you know, one thing that I've seen is perception of different people within the communities, you know some for pipelines, some against pipelines, some willing to work with pipeline companies, others not. And then when you have issues like flaring which again is pollution and noise pollution. I don't know if you've been around flares but they're pretty loud especially when they're first going. That might disturb one neighbor and he doesn't like it at all but it's near his house and the other neighbor allowed it to go in because he's making money on it. The other ones not making money on it. So those types of social issues I did see is, you know they seem to work their way out eventually but I think there's been some permanent wedges driven between people at times and I think it goes back to what you said of it, it's not what happens to you it's how you react to it. And you know some people handle it very well but everybody's get their own perception of what matters to them and what's important to them. And I think that's from a social side of things that's one of the things within families, within communities, within neighbors that I've seen have an impact. You're polluting my water. Well, okay, now prove it, right? So then you go into all the testing and studies of what's actually wrong with the water. Now I'm having salinity issues and on my property upstream from the pipeline that's caused acreage that I have to now be all salt, not produce anything and that's your fault for letting them put a pipeline on your property, you know, it's affecting my property. You know, those are the types of things that I don't think we really consider, which are important. You need to kind of think of those things going in and that's why as we keep repeating communication with everybody in the beginning pulling neighbors together, discussing it is a big help. Scary, but for us on the pipeline side of things but it's necessary. Yeah, I just to echo what everybody has said to date. I mean, I think these are extremely polarizing issues in this day and era and those can absolutely disrupt kind of the everyday life in a community when you're developing a big project or even just a piece of project coming through if it, you know, in linear infrastructure and the social implications of it I think are attempted to be measured through notice and communication through permitting processes but those really are the minimums, right? I think it's on the developer to ensure that they are out there in the community ahead of every permitting application having to deal with environmental, talking about the project, talking about what they're looking at in this permit. You know, we're really lucky in North Dakota to have an agency like DEQ that understands the importance of going into a community and presenting, you know, a permit in that community and getting that directly impacted communities' feedback and input before making a decision. And I think that comes down to, you know, measuring what those social impacts are as the community sees it. You know, we're faced constantly with this decision on how do we use resources? There's only so much of them. They're kind of finite in nature and as we learn or can develop new technologies, we're gonna be presented with different opportunities to capitalize on the value, whether that be leaving them in place or, you know, agricultural use or energy use. And I think the best way that we try to balance those from an environmental standpoint is always finding the maximum efficiency through which we can do it. Always with the protection of health and human health in mind. You know, I think I kind of go back to, it's a legacy thing we look at and should look at generational equity in a number of these decisions when it comes to environmental issues. What might be good for the immediate generation may not be best for future generations. And so measuring, you know, where is it we are today and where do we wanna see the resources around us go should be, you know, a question that, you know, is posed to communities. How do they wanna see their community developed? And sometimes it's at direct odds with an opportunity that's being presented. All right, and the two minutes we have left are there any last remarks from any of our panelists? Well, I guess the simple part of it is if you're in the oil industry and you're dealing with landowners, I mean, I think the common sense statement is very true. You're on their land, you're on their time. Respect it, like you'd want your land and your time respected. I mean, it's really not much more difficult than that. Now there's a lot of planning that goes on to be able to follow through and deliver in the end, set expectations properly. It's the biggest thing, don't over promise. You know, how many times I go into a place and these landowners know more about their land than you'll ever know. They're smart, don't ever tell a landowner, well, once we go through here, you'll never even be able to tell we've been here. How many times have you heard that, right? When I walk in and I hear somebody said that, it's just you shake your head and say, I hope that person is no longer in the state. Because just they're smarter than you are. They know more about their land than you do. And it's their lands, their time, treat it with respect. And I guess that's the short of it for me. Yeah, so we learn as we go and, you know, all companies have the ability to self-police. And I think as an industry, it's probably wise for you guys to work through your organizations and try and police some of the bad actors. And for this simple reason, the first pipeline I did in, I don't know, probably 2007 was on the front of the boom. The first one we did was a one-page agreement. And every time we do something and we have a bad result from a bad company, the price goes up and the document gets thicker. And we're currently past, I don't know, 10, 11, 12 pages long document for a standard pipeline agreement. And the cost is many multipliers times over. So if you want to stop that from going up, stop the bad actors in your business and bad results for landowners and things will get better.