Documentary aims to draw attention to frac sand impacts

Posted on 03/22/2013 by Dan Haugen

$A frac sand processing facility near New Auburn, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jim Tittle)$

A frac sand processing facility near New Auburn, Wisconsin. (Photo by Jim Tittle)

The Oscar-nominated documentary “Gasland” was for many an eye-opening conversation starter on the environmental hazards of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

A new independent documentary called “The Price of Sand” aims to play a similar role in the region’s frac sand mining debate.

St. Paul filmmaker Jim Tittle started his project, like “Gasland” director Josh Fox, after a fossil fuel company began speculating near his family’s land. About two years ago, an oil company bought land down the road from his mother’s home in Hay Creek Township, south of Red Wing, Minnesota.

As word spread about the company’s plans to build a 150-acre open pit silica “frac sand” mine, nearby residents started asking questions about how it would affect them. Tittle, a freelance videographer, decided to seek answers across the river in Wisconsin, where more relaxed regulations had already attracted a silica mining boom. →

Environmentalists sue to stop controversial Illinois frac sand mine

Posted on 12/14/2012 by Dan Ferber

Three environmental groups have sued the state of Illinois in a last-ditch effort to stop a controversial frac sand mine from being built near Illinois’ most-visited state park.

In their lawsuit, the Sierra Club, Prairie Rivers Network and Openlands demanded that the court reject a surface mining permit issued earlier this year by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources for an 80-acre, open-pit sand mine planned directly adjacent to Starved Rock State Park in Ottawa, Illinois. →

Sand mine to proceed near iconic Illinois state park

Posted on 10/29/2012 by Dan Ferber

Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. (Photo by Dan Dzurisin via Creative Commons)

The frac sand mining boom has now spread to Illinois, as state regulators grant approval to build a controversial mining operation next to Starved Rock State Park.

St. Louis-based Mississippi Sand, the company that’s building the 80-acre sand mine, received its third and final permit on October 19, overcoming objections by a consortium of environmental groups. As soon as the company pays a bond to the state of Illinois, they can start digging.

“It’s really tough to see all these permits granted,” said Elliot Brinkman of the Prairie Rivers Network, a Champaign, Illinois, environmental group that fought the project. However, “we’re still trying to find avenues to at least slow the process and make sure people’s voices are heard, and make sure the integrity of these resources are protected as well.” →

Should state help Minnesota counties study frac sand mining?

Posted on 08/13/2012 by Dan Haugen

$frac sand mine$

The Superior Sands mine in Bloomer, Wisconsin, in 2011. Silica mines in Wisconsin and Minnesota are rapidly expanding to supply the booming fracking industry. (Photo © Mary Kenosian, used with permission)

A new industry that could bring hundreds of millions worth of investments is on Minnesota’s doorstep, waiting to be invited in.

The frac sand industry is already booming across the border in Wisconsin, where mining operations are expanding to meet the demand for fine silica used in hydraulic fracturing. The scale of that development, often in scenic areas, has also drawn considerable public opposition.

City, county and township officials, too, have unanswered questions about the impact of frac sand mining on the environment, public health, and roads and bridges. Several southeastern Minnesota cities and counties (as well as in Wisconsin) have established moratoriums to give officials some time to try to decide how best to regulate the new industry.

A state senator and a group of citizen petitioners are now calling on Minnesota officials to play a bigger role in helping answer these questions.

“These are going to be big operations. They’re going to be around for a long time. We need to make sure that we have all the bases covered when we move forward with it,” said state Sen. John Howe, a Republican from Red Wing. →

Ex-Minnesota governor joins frac sand company’s board

Posted on 06/12/2012 by Ken Paulman

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty campaigning for President in Iowa last year. (Photo by Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons)

In a sign of the growing significance of the frac sand industry in the Upper Midwest, a Pennsylvania sand mining company announced Tuesday that former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has joined its board of directors.

Smart Sand, Inc. is in the process of building an 1,100-acre frac sand facility in Oakdale, Wisconsin, which is about 50 miles east of LaCrosse. The facility is expected to produce a million tons of sand per year, with operations beginning later this month, according to a company news release.

While a number of major frac sand mining operations are underway in Wisconsin, several Minnesota counties have considered or impose bans on mining operations, and port cities along the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River, including Winona and Red Wing, have faced active community opposition to sand processing and shipping operations.

“Shale oil and gas is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the U.S. With proper stewardship, it will help solve our nation’s energy crisis and dramatically boost our economy,” Pawlenty said in the news release.

Pawlenty serves on the boards of five other companies, all of them in the tech sector, reports Ed Stych of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal.

Andrew Speaker, CEO of Smart Sand, said in the news release, “We look forward to drawing on [Pawlenty's] expertise as CEO of the great state of Minnesota as we continue to build our company.”

Scenic state park at center of Illinois frac sand fight

Posted on 06/04/2012 by Dan Ferber

A waterfall at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. (Photo by Anne Hornyak via Creative Commons)

For a century, the picturesque river town of Ottawa, Illinois, has supplied sand to a nation, with several companies mining high quality silica sand from the Illinois River Valley to supply makers of glass, molds to make auto parts, paint, and other industrial products.

But what’s coming to Ottawa and nearby towns in the Illinois River Valley is not ordinary sand mining, says Farley Andrews, an Ottawa-based photographer and school bus driver. It’s “hypermining”—sand mining on steroids.

That’s because the great frac sand rush that has engulfed Wisconsin and Minnesota is making inroads in Illinois. And right now, environmentalists say, frac sand mining threatens one of Illinois’ most beloved and iconic state parks—and perhaps the entire Illinois River Valley.

“Our experience here is that there’s probably no one watching and thinking and worrying about this,” said Glynnis Collins, executive director of Prairie Rivers Network, a Champaign, Illinois-based river conservation group. No one knows the extent of the sand mines planned in Illinois, but Wisconsin-style frac sand mining could do serious damage to the fragile ecology of the Illinois River Valley, she said.

“I don’t even know how much of that is at stake, and I fear that we won’t know until it’s done,” Collins said.

As the natural gas industry ramps up hydrofracking operations from New York to Texas, demand rises for industrial quantities of sand. Frackers need it to prop open cracks in deep underground shale deposits, allowing natural gas to flow freely toward the surface.

The best sand for fracking has quartz grains that are relatively pure, hard enough to withstand the pressure thousands of feet below the earth, and round enough to allowing natural gas to flow around them easily, Tony Giordano, president of Kirkwood, Missouri–based Mississippi Sand.

Such sand is not common. Some of the world’s best deposits occur in the Midwest, in thick sandstone formations left behind by ancient seas. And as the fracking boom has taken off, so has demand for Midwestern sand.

“This is the best sand in the world,” said Annie Mwinga, a Milwaukee-based environmental engineer who works in the sand mining industry. “China wants this sand.” The Midwestern sand mining industry, she said, is “going to be huge.”
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