The following excerpt is taken from an article that appeared in the Oct. 16, 1952 edition of The Billings County Pioneer.

“Late this summer, farmers in Walsh county reported great numbers of large fish — all dead — along three miles of the bank of the Forest River; victims of insecticides.

“Water conditions were good, the river was clean and with good current running, turtles and frogs were active, but the fish were dead.”

Despite this article’s age, in North Dakota, we have still failed to realize how a reckless pursuit of profit can lead to our environment being negatively affected. And never has this been more apparent than with the boom in the Bakken and the environmental travesties that have occurred there in.

The state of oil drilling on the Bakken was recently profiled on “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver, and the message wasn’t a good one. Oliver reported on the tumultuous state of oil drilling, and the way it has destroyed the land with oil and chemical spills.

While this exposure of the problems — as well as the multiple reports that Oliver cited in his piece — should serve as a wake-up call to a problem that has gone too long without being fully addressed.

However, that has not seemed to be the response that has happened, with many saying that simply doesn’t understand how North Dakota works. Rob Port wrote on sayanthingblog.com that “If North Dakotans, who actually live here amid the oil and gas activity, saw things the way Oliver does then Democrat Ryan Taylor would be governor right now, and Democrats would likely control the state Legislature. But they don’t, because they do actually live here, and they aren’t seeing oil and gas activity in the state through the lens of the New York Times.”

This attitude, however, is very dangerous to the future of our state. We have already seen this happen time and time again.

The North Dakota Department of Health has issued advisories for the consumption of fish from certain lakes and rivers in North Dakota because “these fish contain levels of mercury which may be harmful to certain segments of the population if they are eaten too often.”

These levels of mercury were caused by years of pollution that ran off into our lakes and rivers, and it is because of this pollution that many large fish in the state of North Dakota can’t be eaten safely.

And now we see thousands of gallons of oil and salt water being spilled, and hundreds of acres of farmland being lost, with little to no accountability.

Now is not the time to stand idly by and claim that those who have problems with how we do things “just don’t understand how we do things,” instead of analyzing what we do, and how we can fix it.