Traffic on U.S. Highway 83 is about to get noticeably heavier.

Some 1,000 extra workers will be using the highway mornings and evenings to get to the Great River Energy Coal Creek Station near Underwood during the second of two major outages required for a $250 million upgrade to the plant.

The work started Saturday and will involve shutting down Coal Creek Unit 1 for 10 weeks, the longest since the unit went into operation.

David Farnsworth, who leads generation and engineering at the plant, said finding labor is a challenge, and local unions cleared their benches and scoured the nation for more help.

Farnsworth said this outage will allow for a number of modifications and upgrades, many of them related to improving the unit's environmental profile.

All the turbine rotors will be replaced, the emissions stack will be modified, new operation controls installed and one of the cooling towers will be completely rebuilt during the outage. Additionally, plans call for replacing the transformer that exports power from the plant site.

Farnsworth said the peak number of workers will remain at the plant for the next six weeks.

"We will be working most jobs six days a week, but the critical work will be seven days," he said. About 60 percent of the workers will be on days and the remaining 40 percent on nights.

The upgrades will improve the plant's power output by 20 to 30 megawatts.

That will be in addition to the 10 megawatts gained last year, when Unit II was put on outage for upgrades. Unit II is scheduled for additional upgrades in 2010, when Great River's next major outage takes place.

- Underwood News

Elevated considerations

The elevator is 93 years old, about as old as the railroad, and it would like to be around awhile longer.

The Hazen elevator has been trying to find its stride in recent years and made some headway by becoming a subsidiary operation of the Falkirk Farmers Elevator, located between Washburn and Underwood.

Falkirk acquired a year-at-a-time lease two years ago, but the Hazen site is seeing falling income, rising expenses and looming debt.

Board president Jim Goetz said one way to solve the problem might be to merge the Hazen site with Falkirk, rather than run it as a leased subsidiary.

Ron Hefta, who manages Falkirk, said Hazen's been a good place to do business.

"I believe the (Hazen) elevator found a niche in ag imports and malt barley," he said.

However, there are some issues, and those include having two uninsurable structures on the Hazen grounds, an old sunflower house and elevator building.

Hefta said there are no guarantees that the Hazen elevator would remain open, but a merger with Falkirk's assets would give it its best chance.

The Hazen elevator board members were directed to look at a merger potential, with an emphasis on continued board representation from Hazen.

A membership meeting of the Hazen elevator will be called to vote on the merger and any consensus would go to the Falkirk's board for its June 10 annual meeting.

- The Hazen Star

Which way for water

Lake Sakakawea is low, water use is high and the treatment plant is getting old.

All three of those conditions make it the right time to look at a regional water project in eastern Mountrail County.

Parshall city auditor Loren Hoffman said the town has been working with Three Affiliated Tribes councilman Marvin Packineau on a memorandum of understanding that outlines a future water plan.

Parshall is at the hub of intense oil development in the county and finds itself selling millions of gallons of bulk water to oil companies that use it to fracture the deep and lucrative middle Bakken oil formation.

Hoffman said the extra income and activity have been a blessing. "For a town that's just about disappeared, now there's hope," he said.

Hoffman said it's long been said that it would be a good thing if the city and the tribe could get together on water, and Parshall has an engineering plan in place for an expanded water plant, plus softening, at an estimated cost of $14 million.

Packineau said getting good water is more important than where it comes from.

"I'm waiting to see what the city comes up with and what we can do," Packineau said.

The other contender is the Fort Berthold Rural Water, which wants to use the lake as a water source, build a treatment plant and serve users in that area, including Parshall.

Bureau of Reclamation representative Greg Gere said no matter what funds are used, only one new water source should be constructed.

Packineau said the Fort Berthold project has about $10 million in available financing, but it would only be fair to see if Parshall can put together funds for a project before proceeding.

- Mountrail County Record