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Is it going to ruin the land? Is it going to ruin the air?"
• A neighbor, Kory Kipferl, owns a 10-acre property adjacent to federal land dotted with active wells on gravel pads. He said he's accepted what he called a need for domestic drilling -- but he's concerned about the water table.
• "Once we start puncturing the water table, that could cause problems, whether you're drilling for gas, oil, water, whatever," Kipferl said.
• The BLM dataset is more extensive than what was reviewed recently by the Government Accountability Office, and filtered to remove duplicate well entries that yielded an overcount. In a recent report, auditors said the BLM needed to do a better job of coordinating with state regulators. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the one well that went uninspected by the BLM had been checked multiple times by the state.
• Still, it's not clear how willing states are to take up the federal task.
• "To say that we're going to start inspecting federal wells is just above and beyond what we could do," said John Rogers, associate director of Utah's Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, pointing to his small staff. He said companies will inspect their own equipment in order to protect their investment, so it's likely that at least some of Utah's 200-plus wells that weren't inspected by BLM are checked by someone.
• "We're certainly not going to second-guess people's inspections," Rogers said of the BLM.
• ___
•

• RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota transportation officials are correcting speed limit signs from 65 mph to 75 on a short section of Interstate 90 near Box Elder that has a reputation as a speed trap.
• The Rapid City Journal reports (http://bit.ly/1uxrOs0 ) that the stretch has had frequent traffic stops made by officers who sit in the median of the highway where the speed limit improperly changed from 75 to 65 mph.
• The state Transportation Commission recently learned of the mistake, and moved quickly to correct what a state official called a "clerical error" that occurred a decade ago.
• "This is a unique situation for this region," said Todd Seaman, the Department of Transportation engineer for the Rapid City area.
• Seaman said the 65-mph speed limit was supposed to have been extended the 1.3 miles east in 2004 after the state closed Exit 66 and built Exit 67. He said the speed limit signs in the area were placed in the correct positions at that time.

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