Prairie Meridian Energy Partners didn’t arrive all at once. They seeped in — like water through sandstone.
Two years ago, the county commissioners held a “public information session” at the high school gym. They brought glossy pamphlets, a slideshow full of smiling workers in hard hats, and a catered spread that made half the room suspicious before the meeting even started. PMEP promised jobs, tax revenue, and “minimal environmental impact.” They said the geology here was perfect: ancient fault lines, stable formations, low seismic risk. They said the coulees would act as natural barriers.
They said a lot of things.
The tribe said no.
It wasn't, maybe. Or perhaps later. It wasn't “we’ll think about it.”
Just no.
Fracking one mile from our main entrance was something we wanted to avoid. We didn’t want wastewater injection wells upstream from our springs. We didn’t want drills visible over the coulee like metal skeletons on the horizon.
But the county approved the permits anyway.
And I understood why — even if I didn’t agree.
North Dakota didn’t allow casinos. Unlike some states, there were no casinos on reservations. Not off reservations. Not anywhere.
State law kept gambling limited to wagering on horse and dog races, and racetracks didn’t employ many people. A few seasonal workers. A handful of part‑timers. Nothing that could sustain a county losing young families to better opportunities.
The Sioux Nation had never pushed for casinos. Even if the law allowed it, they wouldn’t have built them. They stayed aligned with their roots, their spirituality, and their values. The closest thing we had was BINGO nights — and those were for prizes, not money.
Meanwhile, Wyoming — just a few hours west — had casinos. Resorts. Entertainment. Jobs.
People crossed the border every weekend to spend money there instead of here. The county commissioners hated that. If they couldn’t build casinos, then they couldn’t compete with Wyoming. And they couldn’t keep people from leaving.
So they chased industry instead.
Oil. Gas. Fracking.
When PMEP showed up with promises of steady paychecks and “economic revitalization,” the county latched on like a drowning man grabbing a rope.
“Not on tribal land,” they said. “Not our jurisdiction,” they said. “It’ll bring jobs,” they said.
And PMEP built their site exactly one mile from our boundary — as the crow flies — tucked into the coulee just enough to pretend they weren’t staring us in the face. But the drills rose above the ridgeline, tall and skeletal, visible from the school parking lot and the elder center. An eyesore. A reminder.
Every time I drove past, I felt the same thing: They put it there on purpose. Close enough to use our land. Far enough to avoid our laws.
I headed toward the main entrance now, the morning sun catching the metal lattice of the nearest drill. It glinted like a warning.
Kids waiting for the school bus stared at it the way you stare at something you hate but can’t avoid. One of the younger ones — maybe ten — pointed at the drill and said something to his friend. The friend shrugged. Kids adapt faster than adults. That didn’t make it right.
I slowed the patrol truck as I approached the entrance sign — RED ROCK FLATS RESERVATION — and the small turnout beside it. The turnout used to be a place where families parked during ceremonies or where elders sat to watch the sunset. Now it was where PMEP trucks idled while waiting for shift changes.
A white pickup sat there now, engine running. PMEP logo on the door. A man in a reflective vest leaned against the hood, smoking.
He watched me as I pulled up. I watched him back.
He flicked his cigarette into the dirt and climbed into the truck without a word. The engine revved, and he drove off toward the coulee road — the one PMEP carved out of the hillside, asking no one.
I exhaled slowly. Routine, I told myself again. But it didn’t feel routine.
I parked at the tribal police station and stepped inside. The building was small: two offices, a radio room, a holding cell we rarely used. Flyers for missing persons covered the walls, some recent, some decades old. Samantha had helped organize them last year, grouping them by age, by date, and by location. It made the wall look more orderly. It didn’t make it easier to look at.
I hung my jacket and checked the duty log. Nothing unusual overnight. There was a noise complaint. A loose dog. A call from an elder who thought she saw a mountain lion near her shed. Probably a big tomcat.
Then a note scribbled in the margin caught my eye:
“Custodians found empty spray paint cans under the visitor bleachers. Rusty. Tossed in the trash.”
I frowned.
Spray paint wasn’t unusual — vandalism happened, especially under the visitor bleachers where kids thought they were less likely to get caught. But rusty cans meant they’d been there a while. And empty cans… well, empty cans could mean anything.
Tagging. Trash. Or huffing.
I made a mental note to swing by the field later. Not because I thought the kids were huffing — not yet — but because Samantha’s kids had been dizzy this morning, and I didn’t like coincidences.
I sat at my desk and opened the incident report from yesterday — the teen who fainted at the community center. I’d written it up as a medical call, pending follow‑up. But Samantha’s words from this morning stuck with me.
“They said they were hanging out by the coulee.”
Kids hung out there all the time. It wasn’t new. But the timing bothered me. The water levels bothered me. The chemical smell bothered me.
And PMEP bothered me most of all.
They’d been here long enough to settle in, long enough to build their injection wells and their “water recycling facility” in the county, long enough to hire security guards who acted like they were guarding a military base instead of a drilling site.
Long enough to become part of the landscape — the part we didn’t want.
I pulled up the map of the reservation and traced the line from the main entrance to the PMEP site. One mile. Exactly one mile. Close enough that the vibrations from their drills sometimes rattled windows on windy days.
First, we complained. Then we’d protested. And we’d filed formal objections.
The county commissioners shrugged. PMEP smiled. And the drills kept turning.
A knock on the doorframe pulled me from the map.
Gordo stood there, holding a small cooler with water samples. “Got a minute?”
“Always.”
He stepped inside and set the cooler on my desk. “Ran the tests again. The readings are… odd.”
“Odd how?”
“Not dangerous. Not yet. But the toluene levels are higher than they should be for spring runoff.” He hesitated. “And they’re rising.”
A cold thread wound through my stomach. “From the coulee?”
“From the springs feeding into it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It could be nothing. Could be early contamination. Could be PMEP’s injection well pushing something where it shouldn’t go.”
I leaned back in my chair. “They said the geology was stable.”
“They said a lot of things.”
We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of it settling between us.
Finally, Gordo sighed. “I’ll keep testing. But Eliza… monitor those kids.”
“I am.”
He nodded, picked up the cooler, and left.
I stared at the map again. I looked at the coulee. And the springs. And at the PMEP site, sitting like a metal tumor on the horizon.
It has been two years. Two years of drills, trucks, and promises. Two years of the county telling us it wasn’t their problem. And two years of PMEP insisting everything was safe.
And now the kids were getting dizzy. Nosebleeds. Headaches. Rusty spray paint cans under the visitor bleachers.
Something was shifting beneath the surface. And I had a feeling it was only the beginning.