Kerry Hartman of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College (formerly Fort Berthold Community College). Bridgett Chapin, K-INBRE coordinator and a professor of environmental science at Haskell, and Dr. “This issue is especially important to me and to all Native American communities dealing with similar cases.”Ĭunningham and Iorio worked closely with local and tribal environmental offices and under the guidance of Dr. It is important that the people of Fort Berthold know the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing and the subsequent effects on the community’s main drinking water sources,” Iorio maintains. “Hydraulic fracturing is a major issue right now, especially on the Fort Berthold reservation, where a third of North Dakota’s oil is being produced. ![]() The students sampled surface waters and groundwater sources in the region. ![]() Cunningham and Iorio (her family is from the Fort Berthold area) looked for contamination and quality issues in the nearby water bodies that supply drinking water for the Mandan-Hidatsa- Arikara affiliated tribes. Fort Berthold is only one piece of the puzzle.”įort Berthold is located on the Bakken shale formation, a major focus of the nation’s natural gas and oil extraction efforts. “The oil boom in North Dakota is disproportionately affecting Native American communities, and unfortunately similar scenarios are happening all over Indian Country. “We would like to look at the potential impacts this large-scale shale oil extraction has had on the local water supplies, especially in light of the recent fracking waste spills near the reservation,” Cunningham says. The award is given annually to one American Indian undergraduate community-based project for summer research in the students’ home state. Mary Iorio (Mandan-Hidatsa) and Joshua Cunningham (Cherokee) received the award as part of the Kansas IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (K-INBRE) Community- Based Scholar Award Program. ![]() Two Haskell Indian Nations University seniors recently received a community-based research award to study the effects of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, on water quality near the Fort Berthold reservation in North Dakota.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |