Small western ND town continues to grow

February 17, 2014
Bryan Horwath
Forum News Service

CM NOTE: South Heart is approximately 12 miles east of Belfield

South Heart, N.D. In South Heart, on the southern edge of the booming Bakken oil patch in western North Dakota, things have recently begun to settle down a little.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing probably depends on who is opining.

“Things have leveled off a little bit here,” South Heart Mayor Floyd Hurt said. “In a way, that’s good. But we’d like to have a little more building going on. As of right now, we’re kind of at a standstill.”

Though a “standstill” in most communities the size of South Heart — which had a listed population of 340 following the 2012 census — around the country translates to exactly what it sounds like, it’s a unique condition in these parts.

A water and sewer project is nearing completion, a mammoth oil refinery’s campus is going up a few miles east of town and should be done before the end of the year, and a new hotel is set to go up. South Heart has plenty going on — it just isn’t as hectic as, say, Watford City.

“We just finished up with our 200,000 (gallon) water tank, which will increase our water capacity to 300,000 gallons,” Hurt said. “We had it online, but had some trouble with freezing of the floats. We have a contractor coming down to re-adjust the floats soon. Once that’s done, I think we’ll be OK.”

Though Hurt said the official contract hasn’t been signed yet, South Heart will also have a new wastewater runoff system, which is tied to the under-construction Dakota Prairie Refinery and the city of Dickinson.

“We’ve been working with Dickinson for our sewer,” Hurt said. “As soon as we get our contract worked out, we’re ready to go with that. We’re going to run a line to 116th (Avenue) and dump our wastewater into a station there.”