Bismarck — Officials say they’re ready to rescind a 2003 law requiring farmers to place locks on anhydrous ammonia tank valves when the tanks are left unattended. It’s believed to be one of the few, if not the only, such law in the country, adopted in an attempt to crack down on ammonia being used to make methamphetamine. The program was originally implemented in Williams and McKenzie counties in the northwestern portion of the state. “The administrative rule was adopted by the commissioner in 2003 due to a high rate in theft of anhydrous ammonia in those two counties as a pilot program to see how it works,” said Spencer Wagner, fertilizer specialist with the North Dakota Agriculture Department. “After some discussion with law enforcement and the attorney general’s office, we proposed to repeal the existing law. It’s a hard rule to enforce, and we’ve come up with some new regulation to curb meth use. For example, we still train people to look for keys when theft occurs.” State reports also indicated the old law was never enforced, and the $100 fine for a first offense was never levied for a first offense. State officials aren’t too concerned about the theft of NH3 to be used in meth labs, and the state has placed restrictions on the sale of over-the-counter pseudoephedrine, a key component of meth. Since then, the state’s criminal charges for meth manufacture have dropped from about 300 in 2003 to less than 10 in 2010. State officials are currently going through comments received during a comment period that ended Dec. 18, 2012, before proceeding with the repeal, which is likely to happen.
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