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Baucus announces $1M grant to ease oil boom impact in Culbertson, Montana

Senator Baucus http://www.baucus.senate.gov/ said Tony Preite, an economic development veteran from Havre who is with USDA Rural Development http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/MT_offices.html , will become the single contact for communities seeking development help. Priete’s involvement will mean communities will only have to talk to one person to access all relevant federal programs.

In government-speak, the seemingly endless drain of residents leaving Eastern Montana during the past few decades was called "outward migration," a term uttered repeatedly as rural schools consolidated and post offices closed.

Towns like this community of 700 seemed to be in perpetual shutdown mode, at least until the Bakken oil boom spilled across the North Dakota border. Now, rapid growth is leaving formerly sleepy communities breathless.

Roads are eroding and water and sewer systems, some of them a century old, are being asked to accommodate rampant growth. At the same time, there’s a new high-speed grain terminal with a 140-rail-car loop track being built on Culbertson’s http://www.culbertsonmt.com/ edge. Beside the terminal, a hydraulic fracturing company plans a depot for importing rail car loads of fine sand, a key ingredient in extracting oil from Bakken shale.

Community leaders, who say the burden of growth has caught them off guard, told Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont, and officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday that help was needed dealing with growth not experienced on the Hi-Line in decades.

By TOM LUTEY [email protected]

Full Story: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/baucus-announces-m-grant-to-ease-oil-boom-impact-in/article_0ec5db0d-30dd-5a2e-8531-4b7ddd1684ca.html

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