Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

Coming up to the tank for a drink of water. As hot and dry as it has gotten that has become very important around here. Taken 7/14/2007.

East Fork of Tullock creek. I haven't seen it consistently flow such a stream in a lot of years. It's sure nice to see, how long it will last though is anybodies guess. Not long enough for sure. Taken 4/11/2007.

This photo is from a while ago but is indicative of what is happening now again. The water is running high as the rest of the snow melts in the 50+ temperatures we are getting. You can see where the water was running and by the ice hung up in the tree how high it was earlier. This photo was taken by My Darling Wife. Taken 2/21/2007.

The finished product. The tank full of water and the fence put back in to separate the pastures. I think it will work real good. there are a few leaks thanks to the hired hand not tightening the bolts enough but I will be able to fix that in another year. Taken 6/28/2006.

I got the tank installed at the new well I drilled. It's a 25 foot steel tank with a cement bottom in it. It supposed to hold 6000 gallons of water. I can remember as a little boy my dad having trouble with water at this place and to this day water is a fight here. It shouldn't be a problem any longer with this monster tank and a new well here. The problem should be solved. Taken 6/21/2006.

One of the biggest Gambles out there is farming and ranching. Gambling on the weather, markets, nature and whatever else comes your way. I call drilling a well a gamble too. In my country you are almost guaranteed to hit water, but the gamble is, whether it is a useful amount of water and whether it is at a depth you can easily pump.

The well at what I call the windmill has been there at least 85 years that I can document and knowing the local history I believe it to be over 100 years old. I am still pumping water from it but I am not getting what I would call a useful amount any more out of it. Is it going dry? I don't think so. I think the veins in the well are just getting plugged up with minerals and such and it's just not flowing very much anymore. Our water around here is known for doing that so that the well has lasted as long as it has is amazing in my opinion.

I had been wanting to get a well driller in for a while to drill a new well in the area and finally got it accomplished yesterday. The old windmill, which is about 50 yards away, was about 300 feet deep. Only about 180 feet were useful do to an old sucker rod being dropped in the well over 30 years ago. We hit water in the new hole at 115 feet and drilled it out to 140 feet. Ten gallons a minute of flow in the new well. This is a useful amount at a useful depth. I will drop a 1/2 horse submersible down the hole and will just be able to pump all the available water with it. It works good for me. Last time I had a well drilled it cost around $20 a foot. This time it cost around $25 a foot. Either let the cattle go thirsty or spend the money to fix the water up right. Pretty easy calculation in my book.

I am trying something else new at this well too. I am going to put a 25 foot metal tank with a concrete bottom in to hold water for the cattle. This way there will be enough water there for the cattle when they come in to drink and they won't have to stand around and wait for water to be pumped into the tank. The tank manufacturer will have the tank built in 2 weeks and I have all ready made arrangements for the concrete company to prepare the site, set the forms and pour the concrete. Full steam ahead to fix the water up. Spend that money, go in debt further while interest rates are going up, there's the real gamble.

There are two great pleasures in gambling: that of winning and that of losing. French proverb.

There is an interesting story in the Gazette about the problems of re-injecting Coal bed Methane water. If you are interested in the whole CBM development it is very interesting, otherwise I'm sure its as dry as dirt. One really interesting thing jumps out at me from the article though.

The Tongue River layer is perhaps the best option for re-injection because it is nearest to the surface and would allow the injected water to be tapped by wells.

The Tongue River layer ranges from 750 feet thick near the edges of the basin to 3,000 feet thick. This layer contains the gas-bearing coal seams that producers want to drill. The coal seams also provide water for stock and domestic wells.

The whole time the CBM advocates have been talking about development they have been telling us that what they are doing will not affect the ground water we drink and use for cattle water here in Eastern Montana. But look at the sentence above, "The coal seams also provide water for stock and domestic wells." So, if they de-water the coal seam to extract the methane where does it leave those of us living in the area. No water for our houses or our livestock since this is the water we use now.

How can they tell me it won't affect me when it is now obvious it will affect me. Lie about something enough and people will start to believe what you are saying and this is a perfect example of it. The industry claims it won't affect groundwater and it will. Are they also lying when they say that dumping the water into our streams will not affect the water quality? You bet your ass they are lying, lying to exploit Eastern Montana's resources for minimal costs.

I understand that the whole CBM movement, which will strip our easily accessible water away forever, will never stop but we need sensible development that minimizes impact. Hopefully Thursday the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) will enact regulations that minimize the impact to our water quality that the developers want to pollute for their short term gain. Hell, even the Billings Gazette agrees that the DEQ should do this so I ain't the only one. I anxiously await with baited breath the decision of the DEQ.

Lying is the same as alcoholism. Liars prevaricate even on their deathbeds. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Boy it got warm around here yesterday. What little snow there was on the hillside above the corral broke and overflowed my diversion ditch and was flowing down through the corral. What a mess it was making in the corral.



I felt like some farmer tending his irrigation walking around with my shovel diverting water so it didn't make too big of mess in the corral. Once I got it flowing through the corral I worked on the diversion ditch and finally after a couple of hours picking at the frozen ground got the water flowing through it like it should. Walking around with a shovel tending water. Bah, farmers do that.

I called a well driller back in December about drilling a new well in one place out in a summer pasture. He said he would get back to me at the end on January. I finally heard from him yesterday. I guess he got January and February mixed up. He wanted to come out and drill the well next week. I told him to call me when he is closer but that it is wet enough I don't think he could get his rig in. He was very surprised by this. He said as dry as everyone was he was sure he could get out here. I told him it wasn't real wet out here but it was slick enough his rig would never make it. Never assume just because "every place else" is dry to think we are. Most of the time we have a "little" more.

I don't know when I will be able to get the driller in. Eventually I will and more money will be out of my pocket drilling a new well. Better that than the cows dying of thirst though.

Water, air, and cleanness are the chief articles in my pharmacy. Napoleon Bonaparte

All the proponents of coal bed metahnae (CBM) development keep telling us that the water they discharge is all fine and dandy and we as ranchers should quit complianing and let this development continue like it has in Wyoming. Now I see Wyoming ranchers are starting to see the problems of this CBM water.

Ranchers seeks limits on methane water

Some ranchers and landowners complain that they have lost fields and trees because of poor quality groundwater pumped to the surface by the wells in order to release the methane from coal seams.

"The vast majority of water is flushed down draws and run down ephemeral drainages. It destroys the land," Marge West, a Campbell County rancher, said. "We had 80 acres of prime hay meadow destroyed, and we lost 200 cottonwood trees."

So I guess no matter what the CBM proponents say, we see the real truth here. Hopefully these Wyoming ranchers can rein in this uncontrolled discharge of water that hurts us all.

Details create the big picture. Sanford I. Weill

Montana and many people in Montana oppose dumping possibly contaminated water into our streams and that is getting the attention of Wyoming coal bed methane (CBM) producers. The solution? The Wyoming Governor wants to pipe the contaminated water to a different river that doesn't flow into Montana. They will just contaminate Nebraska's water instead. I just think this is funnier than hell. How short sited can you be to contaminate every body's water, whether it's Montana or Nebraska, for a little tax income.

One of my problems, so to speak, is that, in America, we tend to thing in relatively short-term. In the Middle East and Asia and other parts of the world, they think in terms of centuries or 500 years or 1,000 years. Jay Rockefeller