News

Westhope moves forward

Scott Wagar

10/16/2012

With Lynn Helms of the North Dakota Industrial Commission and Department of Mineral Resources announcing recently that 2,400 wells for oil will be drilled in Bottineau County starting in 2015, the city of Westhope is preparing its city for the development that will come into its community.

For the residents of Westhope, they just didn’t start planning a couple of weeks ago when the news came out that oil activity would be increasing in county. Westhope’s leaders and local people have spent the past year planning for the future.

“We have a committee that has been meeting monthly to develop a Comprehensive City Land Use Plan. We are in the final stages and have one meeting to go, then the plan will go before the city council and we will have a public meeting,” said Margo Helgeson, mayor of Westhope. “When the plan is finalized we will have updated our zoning ordinances. We will also map out areas for industrial use, commercial use and public use like residential, which will deal with single family, two family, multi family and mobile homes. It should map out where we want to grow and how we want to grow.”

Helgeson added that the city will need to address the city’s infrastructure needs and obtain estimates on what it will cost to develop each area of the town’s development plan.

For Westhope, planning for increase oil activity isn’t something new for its towns people. After oil was discovered in the Westhope area in the early part of the 1900s, and throughout a variety of decades to follow, the city’s government has had plenty of experience planning development issues, which they honed down to perfection.

Helgeson said that it takes a number of factors to make developmental plans succeed.

“You need to start by getting a good committee together, which include interested and concerned members of the community. You also need to work with someone that has the knowledge of what it takes to do this.  We are working with Sean Weeks of Ackerman-Estvold who are located in Minot. They are our city engineers.  And they have a good name and have completed plans for both Kenmare and Mohall," Helgeson said. "As far as the affordable part, that depends on the community.  What is it worth to you have it done and done right. We felt it was very important to ‘Get our Ducks in a Row,’ which I felt was important because I did not want us to say we should have done this or should have done that.  It takes time and work, but it will be well worth it.”