The New Wild West by Blaire Briody

Author:Blaire Briody
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

26. DONNY NELSON

It wasn’t easy to find Donny Nelson. When I first arrived in the area, I wanted to find someone who was outspoken against the oil and gas companies, but when I asked people who that might be, I received blank stares. Having grown up in the mountains of northern California, where a new water bottling company in town prompted protests and angry letters, and our elementary school curriculum involved pretending to be trees and singing about recycling, I was shocked. “Are you sure you haven’t heard of anyone?” I asked. Finally, I called blogger Jim Fuglie, who wrote about environmental concerns in the state. Without hesitating, he blurted out Nelson’s name. “He’s your guy.”

As I soon discovered, having an opposing opinion is difficult in a pro-drill state. I expected to see frequent protests against fracking and arrived early to my first city council meeting in Williston, thinking there might be hundreds of angry locals crammed into the small room. But what I found was much different. I followed Nelson to a local county commissioners’ meeting in Watford City. Standing behind a group of developers and builders presenting their cases to receive permits (which seemed like a courtesy, as not a single one went unapproved) were three farmers, there to express their anger and concerns with the development—an elderly man with white hair who spoke in stuttered sentences, Nelson, and Nelson’s 39-year-old nephew, Troy.

Donny Nelson was considered a troublemaker, according to most North Dakotans—though he was the kindest, most softest-spoken troublemaker I’d ever met. Nelson spoke out publicly against the lack of regulation over the oil companies. He wrote op-eds about the dangerous trains transporting Bakken oil throughout the country and became the oil and gas chair for the pro-environment advocacy group, the Western Organization of Resource Councils. The local chapter, the Dakota Resource Council, called itself “the watchdogs of the prairie.” When he was in his mid-20s, Nelson participated in protests at the Canadian border to support farmers’ rights, and in 2010, he attended an anti-fracking rally in Washington, DC, where he met Gasland director Josh Fox. Nelson didn’t raise genetically modified crops on principle. Nelson wouldn’t call himself an “environmentalist,” though. He and other farmers who agreed with him called themselves “conservationists,” because they wanted to conserve the environment. There was a difference, they told me.

In some ways, Nelson was not atypical of North Dakota farmers—he struggled with wanting to conserve and protect the land around him while reckoning with his conservative upbringing that championed the free market. In an overwhelmingly Republican state, Nelson voted Independent in the 2012 presidential election because he didn’t like either candidate (“I don’t even remember who the Independent was,” he said, laughing), voted for a Democrat in the 2008 race for governor, then voted for Republican Jack Dalrymple in the 2012 governor race.

Dalrymple had taken the post in 2010 after Governor John Hoeven resigned to become a senator, and he was thrilled to inherit an oil boom. He successfully ran for reelection two years later.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.