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Consider the plight of Bridgeport, Neb. At middecade, federal clean-water standards will force its 1,600 residents to clean up the naturally occurring uranium in its municipal water. Their choices: build a treatment plant or hope to find cleaner water by digging new wells. Even with state or federal help to build a plant, residents would have to pay roughly six times their current monthly water bill simply to run it, estimates city administrator Finley deGraffenried.
In more densely populated areas, neighboring towns might share the cost. Out here, the nearest city is 15 miles away, and the pipeline needed to connect it would cost at least $1.5 million.
"I don't want to boohoo this deal. Some of these communities are dying and, frankly, maybe we ought to put a fork in them," Mr. deGraffenried says. But "let me tell you, there's a hole in the Midwest. [And] who gets the time, the money, the political pull?"
Indeed, the political clout of frontier counties was long ago eroded by depopulation. Of Nebraska's 49 state senators, for instance, only 10 represent the nearly two-thirds of the state west of Grand Island. In the US Congress, Rep. Tom Osborne alone represents the same territory - and then some.
Instead, frontier counties innovate locally. When the local cafe closed down in Gove, Kan., in the early 1990s, the county court had to cater meals from out of town for juries, and some officials threatened to leave. So the local community improvement group (which had already reopened the grocery in town) raised funds, as well as a new building, for the County Seat Cafe.
Or consider Loving County in the Texas oil patch, which has fewer people per square mile than any county in the contiguous US (or any part of Greenland, for that matter). Yet its 67 people still find ways to maintain all the traditional functions: a local court, a sheriff and deputy, an auditor, a treasurer, and so on.
"You just think smaller," explains County Judge Donald Creager, who can't remember the last time a felony was committed in Loving. The biggest challenge is getting reelected, he adds. "It doesn't take too many people upset at you to lose a majority."
One of the enduring mysteries of the Plains frontier is that it has so far avoided widespread poverty. Although its median household income - $30,079 - rank nearly as low as West Virginia, the poorest state in 1999, its share of poor households looked significantly smaller (15.8 percent versus West Virginia's 17.9 percent). One explanation: The frontier may spread incomes more evenly than Appalachia does, and its household income actually grew faster than the national average during the 1990s.
But demographers warn that many frontier households remain uncomfortably close to poverty. "It's one of those untold stories," says Richard Rathge, director of the North Dakota State Data Center on the campus of North Dakota State University in Fargo. "If you drop below the poverty line, you're on the radar screen. But if you're marginally above the poverty line, you're not."
That describes Adams County, N.D., to a T. Its median household earned $650
less a year than the comparable West Virginia household in 1999, yet its poverty rate remained a dramatic 5.7 percentage points below West Virginia's.
To cope with its stagnant tax base, the county has consolidated services. Hettinger, the county seat, folded its police force into the county sheriff's office in 1984, merged its street and public-works departments with the county's a year later, and now works closely with the county on various projects.
The arrangement means Hettinger devotes two-thirds of its $260,000 budget to pay for county services. In return, it saves easily $100,000 a year, estimates Mrs. Svihovec, who's credited with pushing the consolidation plan.
Police protection, for example, costs almost the same today as it did when Hettinger ran its own police force - despite 20 years of inflation. And county help has allowed the city to get federal money to repave the highway down the center of the well-kept and still-vibrant town.
Not everyone's happy. "I'm getting tired of working 250 hours a month," says County Sheriff Gene Molbert. "It has not gotten people coming back."
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Some observers argue that the whole county structure - a British import from colonial days - doesn't make sense for the frontier, anyway. James Satterlee, a retired sociologist from South Dakota State University, has suggested counties join forces to create what he calls a "New Community." One government center and a handful of well-located schools could serve a half-dozen counties or "neighborhoods," as they would be called.
For now, what's the key to begin reversing the decline?
"Cooperation," says Svihovec. Although people don't want to hear the problems associated with depopulation, "you have got to get beyond that. You have got to break down those walls and start communicating."
This would be a good time for Adams County to ratchet up that cooperation. Svihovec plans to retire next month.
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TOM BROWN - STAFF
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