August 12, 2026
Bismarck, ND. – The Dakota Resource Council (DRC) and eight of its members living in rural Richland and Wilkin Counties are asking the North Dakota Department of Water Resources once again to have their day in court and reconsider hearing a case that was dismissed. On July 30, an administrative law judge dismissed the petitioners’ challenge to the agency’s approval of a large-scale water sale which threatens an already-stressed aquifer on which the petitioners have relied for generations to run their homes and farms.
The case centers on a decision by the Department of Water Resources on August 20, 2025, to allow the city of Wahpeton to sell 500,000 gallons of water per day to supply a planned 12,500-head dairy operation run by a Minnesota-based dairy company, Riverview ND, LLP. That water would be drawn from the Wahpeton Buried Valley Aquifer, a source that has been documented as severely stressed for many years.
Earlier this year, attorneys for the Department of Water Resources asked an administrative law judge to dismiss the case, arguing that Wahpeton — not the state agency — bore responsibility for the water sale, and that the petitioners lacked standing to challenge the decision because they were not Wahpeton residents and had not yet suffered harm.
Scott Carlson, executive director of Farmers’ Legal Action Group (FLAG), who, along with the Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC), represents the eight citizens and Dakota Resource Council, said the hearing planned for mid-August would have finally allowed the petitioners to make their case in full.
“This hearing would have given these citizens the chance to present evidence and give the Department of Water Resources the chance to change course, before any of this becomes irreversible,” Carlson said. “The evidence — including the agency’s own documents — shows that this water sale puts groundwater resources at risk that these families have depended on for generations for their homes and for their farms.
Petitioner Mary Sahl said: “I do not understand why the state is severely risking the depletion of the only water source for the city of Wahpeton and the surrounding area farmsteads. There is no back up water supply for Wahpeton or for those of us who rely on this groundwater.”
The petitioners — all of whom rely on the same groundwater resources as the dairy — argue that the Department of Water Resources’ approval of the sale runs counter to the agency’s own mission to manage North Dakota’s water resources responsibly for a resilient future. The citizens and Dakota Resource Council are asking the agency to reconsider its dismissal of the case because they were deprived of the evidentiary hearing, which had been scheduled to take place August 12-13 at the State Capitol Building.