MANNING - Oil drillers in Dunn County use 1 million gallons of water to fracture every well they drill to make the oil come out better.

With 16 rigs capable of poking a new well in the county every six weeks or so, that's adding up to millions of gallons of water injected two miles down into oil wells every month.

News that the State Water Commission is fielding 10 new applications for 2,700 acre-feet of water extraction for industrial water depots is making local ranchers nervous about how much water will disappear from precious underground stores.

The State Water Commission met with about 40 local residents Tuesday at the Dunn County Courthouse in Manning in a room that one county official said wouldn't have been able to hold the crowd had it been during the evening.

Dunn County Commissioner Bob Kleeman said, "People want to know if they're going to wake up and not find water."

Kleeman said he'd hate to see ranchers sell out because they can't get water for livestock.

"When are you gonna say, 'Whoa'?" he asked State Water Commission representatives.

Bob Shaver, director of Water Appropriations, said the department hasn't said "yes" to the new applications yet either.

He said the commission has a backlog of 300 water permit applications and the 10 that are pending in Dunn County will each take six months to a year to approve.

Shaver said the commission isn't in the business of approving applications that run other people out of water.

"We won't let that happen. That's why we monitor," he said. "All approvals will be sustainable over the long term."

Shaver said pre-existing ranch wells will have "senior" water rights to any of the water depots that are being applied for around the county.

However, he said the law requires that people make a reasonable effort to access water and some shallow wells may have to be drilled deeper in the future.

Kleeman said his phone has been ringing off the hook.

"People are really scared out there. Their dams are dry already and the Southwest Water Pipeline is not here yet," he said.

Tim Loh is a member of the Dunn County Planning and Zoning Board. He said locals need to know as much as possible about their own wells and the water source they draw from.

"Depending where people live and what type of well they have, this is something to be aware of," Loh said. "Maybe they want to put their well deeper now, but the most important thing is that people are educated."

Shaver and Alan Wanek, state hydrology manager, said the department has been working with the Department of Mineral Resources to try to understand the size of the water demand from oil drilling in the foreseeable future. There are 85 rigs in the state now and other applications for water depots are pending around the oil patch.

"It's a very tough number to get our arms around," Shaver said.

Drillers prefer well water because untreated lake or river water could "sour" wells by injecting bacteria into the oil formations, said Wanek.

The state already knows that the Fox Hills aquifer, which underlies most of the west, is declining about one to two feet a year.

Locally, in Dunn County, the state will monitor 17 wells in the Killdeer Aquifer, which curves from southeast of Killdeer up toward the Killdeer Mountains.

Hydrologist Andrew Nygren has been heading up the monitoring program. He said the Killdeer Aquifer, used by ranches and the City of Killdeer, still has another 140 feet of water depth, though it's slightly lower than at any time since 1991.

Nygren said the department will set up computer models of the Killdeer Aquifer to see the effect of water depots and big users on the city, livestock and domestic wells.

What he sees now in the Killdeer Aquifer gives no cause for alarm.

"There's nothing to indicate it's going dry," he said.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)