5 things to know today: Training grant, Carbon capture, 'Pore space', Redistricting lawsuits, Thai Orchid

092621.B .FF.MARVINWINDOWS.01.jpg — Sheriff Bill Bergquist, sheriff of Clay County from 2002 until 2019, has been placed in hospice care due to recent progression from Alzheimer's Dementia.

By Forum staff

August 05, 2022 at 7:00 AM

1. FMWF Chamber Foundation receives $9.62 million workforce training grant

The Fargo Moorhead West Fargo Chamber of Commerce’s foundation has received a $9.62 million federal Good Jobs Challenge Grant to support training workers for the region’s agriculture, manufacturing and technology industries.

The grant from the Economic Development Administration will be used to train more than 900 workers in the next three years through the Ignite Initiative Regional Workforce Training System, the Chamber announced Wednesday, Aug. 3.

The program will focus on helping people of color, immigrants, veterans, military spouses, and people who have been through the criminal justice system, by providing support services and reducing barriers to starting and completing training.

The Chamber Foundation is partnering with the Grand Farm Research and Education Initiative, North Dakota State College of Science, Emerging Prairie, University of Mary and Workbay on the worker training program.

2. Red Trail Energy celebrates month of carbon capture and storage operations in Richardton

After starting operations in 2007, Red Trail Energy LLC of Richardton, N.D., is debt-free and has paid out $25 million to its shareholders as dividends. Mikkel Pates / Forum News Service

In southwest North Dakota, roughly 724 people call the town of Richardton home. One of its newest residents is an ethanol facility's carbon capture center that has become the first such capture and storage project approved, under state primacy, in the United States.

An open house hosted by Red Trail Energy, an ethanol processing company that’s been producing since 2007, at their Richardton plant on Wednesday highlighted the facility's sequestering of 19,335 metric tons of climate-warming carbon emissions since launching its carbon capture operations in mid-June.

Gerald Bachmeier, CEO of Red Trail Energy, during the tour said he projects the facility will capture approximately 180,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. According to Bachmeier, tests have shown that the small southwest North Dakota community is a prime location for carbon sequestration.

“When we did our step rate test, we ran eight times the amount that we'd be injecting. It was phenomenal. It didn't even pressure up or anything. So we're very pleased with the results of that,” he said. “Sometimes it's good to be lucky. If you threw a dart on a map and were looking for a place to do carbon sequestration, you couldn't find a better place.”

In ethanol production, Bachmeier said facilities will receive and break down a corn bushels into one third clean ethanol, one third carbon and one third distilled grain and corn oil.

3. North Dakota Supreme Court sides with Oil Patch landowners in dispute over 'pore space' law

The North Dakota Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a group of landowners in a complex dispute over the oil and gas industry's use of underground rock cavities.

The unanimous ruling released Thursday, Aug. 4, upheld critical parts of a lower court's decision to strike down a state law that prevented some landowners from receiving compensation for the use of underground cavities on their property.

The Republican-held state Legislature and Gov. Doug Burgum approved the industry-backed legislation in 2019, setting the stage for a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Landowners Association.

The cavities, known as “pore space,” can be used by oil producers for the disposal of salt water or for the injection of carbon dioxide to boost production from declining oil wells.

The landowners argued the 2019 law illegally stripped away their property rights. The state contended the law fell within the state's authority to coerce property for the public good. Continental Resources, a major oil producer, intervened in the case and joined the state's side.

A district court judge struck down the whole law in a 2021 ruling, but the Supreme Court's decision Thursday restored some pieces of the law that Northwest Landowners' attorney Derrick Braaten said weren't of much consequence to his clients.

4. Redistricting lawsuits will not change North Dakota's legislative map this year

Screen Shot 2022-08-04 at 1.00.20 PM.png — The North Dakota Legislature approved redrawn legislative districts for the state in November 2021.

Two lawsuits challenging North Dakota's new legislative districts will not affect the political map for this year’s election cycle, according to lawyers working on the cases.

Lawmakers crafted and passed a plan last year that redrew the state's legislative boundaries into 47 districts of roughly equal population. States must reconfigure their district lines every 10 years to accommodate population changes.

As in the past, each North Dakota district will elect one state senator and two representatives, but the new map also includes two subdivided House districts around the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation and the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

In those two districts, mapmakers divided the population in half for House districts, assigning one representative to an area encompassing most of the Native American population and the other to the majority-white surrounding area.

In February, the split House districts became the subject of two lawsuits — one brought by a pair of Native American tribes and tribal citizens, and another brought by Republican party officials and voters.

Lawyers representing parties in both lawsuits told Forum News Service the litigation over the new districts won't change the boundaries before the November general election. Trials in the two cases have not yet been scheduled, but the attorneys believe they will likely take place next spring or summer.

5. Thai a little kindness: Community rallies to support Thai Orchid after construction affects its business

Thai Orchid.jpg — Owners of Thai Orchid restaurant in Moorhead recently said in a post to its Facebook page that the business is struggling due to ongoing construction on Center Avenue near the Moorhead Center Mall.

The Osa family didn’t know what else to do.

The Thailand natives had purchased the Thai Orchid in Moorhead nine years ago and put everything they had into the business. Patriarch Addy Osa was the chef, who used the authentic Thai recipes of their great-grandmother. Mom Pasorn made all the sauces herself. Sister Name was also a chef. Sister Anne managed all the marketing.

They had built a good business and even managed to survive the financial uncertainties caused by COVID.

But major construction on Center Avenue by the Moorhead Center Mall, where Thai Orchid is located, has drastically reduced their business. Day after day, night after night, the Osas looked at a restaurant filled with empty tables and wondered how they could pay their mortgages and bills. How much longer could their business survive?

Feeling desperate, the family thought of something that Addy Osa had told them when they first opened their restaurant: “Treat our customers like friends visiting our home.”