North Dakota has little urban or industrial pollution. An environmental issue confronting the state in the mid-1980s and early 1990s was how to use its coal resources without damaging the land through strip mining or polluting the air with coal-fired industrial plants. Major environmental issues confronting the state are importation of non-hazardous and hazardous solid wastes for treatment or disposal, non-point surface water pollution from agricultural and native land, groundwater contamination by fuel storage tanks and by irrigation, and air pollution by energy conversion plants.
The Environmental Health Section of the North Dakota Department of Health oversees programs to ensure water and air quality. North Dakota has little urban air pollution with one exception: motor vehicle traffic is causing excess ambient carbon monoxide in an area within the city of Fargo. The major industrial sources of air contaminants within the state are seven coal-fired electrical generating plants, a coal gasification plant, a refinery, and agricultural commodity processing facilities. The ambient air quality has been in compliance with federal standards, although an epidemiological study has associated certain air contaminants with a higher incidence of respiratory illness among persons living in the vicinity of coal-burning plants.
To conserve water and provide irrigation, nearly 700 dams have been built, including Garrison Dam, completed in 1960. The Garrison Diversion Project, authorized by the US Congress in 1965, was intended to draw water from Lake Sakakawea, the impoundment behind Garrison Dam.
Diversion of household waste to recycling grew to about nearly 15% of the waste stream. Yard wastes, household appliances, and scrap tires are also diverted for compost, recycling, or fuel, respectively. In 2003, North Dakota had 17 hazardous waste sites listed in the Environmental Protection Agency's database, but none was on the National Priorities List. In 2001, North Dakota received $24,606,000 in federal grants from the Environmental Protection Agency; EPA expenditures for procurement contracts in North Dakota that year amounted to $70,000.