Dickinson Water Depot in Bad Location | Video

Jason Dumas | 3/11/2013

Traffic in downtown Dickinson is busy enough without dozens of semis mixed in with all the cars. The problem is that there is a water depot in the middle of town the oil industry uses to fill up their tanks.

The city`s goal is to keep these 18-wheelers out of town. This will help the flow of traffic as well as make the lives of the drivers easier.

"I don`t like driving down these main streets if I don`t have to," said Brian Holland, a truck driver. "I would rather drive, like on the industrial side, it`s all open. Where here, you got hazards of not being able to see other vehicles and worrying about other city traffic."

It`s an inconvenient location. The water depot isn`t very accommodating to the many trucks that come in and out multiple times a day to fill up. There are no bathrooms and space is limited.

"They need something more where we can load more trucks," adds trucker John Altenberg. "Like I said, there`s times we`ll come in here and wait two hours to load. I`ve seen 10 trucks lined up here, and it takes 25 minutes to load a truck."

Dickinson City Administrator Sean Kessel says although nothing has been agreed upon, the city could shut down the facility and that there is no timeline so changes can be made sooner rather than later.

Dickinson has preliminary plans to put a new water vending facility just west of town, where a new I-94 exit would be constructed.

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