Winona activists arrested in frac sand protests; Tomassoni sells out MN trout in committee

While the Minnesota legislature considers the creation of standards for silica sand mining and a Senate committee guts provisions for the protection of trout streams, members of the Catholic Worker movement have taken much more radical direct action to address their concerns about industrial sand mining in the driftless area.

The group staged earlier anti-sand mining protests, blocking traffic in February, 2012, and climbed on top a bus to protest a University of Minnesota frac sand mining conference in October, 2012. Seven people were arrested in the October direct action.

The Rochester Post Bulletin's John Weiss reports in Group takes silica protest to another level:

Dan Wilson was one of about 20 people arrested Monday for misdemeanor trespassing after blocking trucks loaded with silica sand from getting to a Mississippi River loading dock in Winona. But he believes the wrong group was taken into custody.

As far as the Winona man is concerned, police should have arrested those who own the facility for trespassing on the city with their sand, which can cause medial and economic problems.

"We are not the ones trespassing on the industry, they are trespassing on us," he said after he was booked and released. About 20 others were arrested at another site in the city. . .

Protesters have written letters to the editor, talked with local officials and did other things but to no avail, Wilson said. "We decided we needed to start making sacrifices," he said. . . .

Eileen Hanson, a member of the Winona Catholic Worker community, said the weekend seminar attracted about 100 people from several Midwest states. Those arrested at the CD Corp. site and another 20 or so at a sand-processing plant on the outskirts of Winona, were both local and from other states, she said.

"We're saying no to this dangerous and destructive industry," she said."This was just one more way of saying, 'Hey we have really strong concerns about this.'" . . .

Their concerns aren't completely groundless. Read on.

Trout fishery protections stripped from Fish and Game bill

On April 24, in an unconnected action back at the state capitol, the Senate Finance - Environment, Economic Development and Agriculture Division stripped out the provisions in SF 786 that would have helped preserve Southeastern Minnesota's trout streams.

The testimony begins around 1:15 here. Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Landwehr offered compelled testimony in support of the provisions, as did John Lenczewski from Trout Unlimited.

Before the roll call vote, committee chair David Tomassoni (DFL-Chisholm) said that these provisions were not appropriate for a Game and Fish bill--and that there are trout on the Iron Range and his area might be next for trout protection.

Tom Saxhaug (DFL-Grand Rapids) agreed but Bev Scalze (DFL-Little Canada), who sits on the policy committee, rightly brought up that as a finance committee they should not be undoing major policy provisions.

Here are the roll call votes that gutted the pro-fishery provisions. The first vote is to remove section 50 of the bill requiring setbacks from trout streams, the second vote is on section 51 limiting groundwater usage and prohibiting mining within 25 foot of the water table.

Tomassoni YES YES

Dibble NO NO

Dziedzic NO NO

Hawj NO NO

Ingebrigtsen PASS YES

Osmek YES YES

Ruud YES YES

Saxhaug YES YES

Scalze NO NO

Schmit NO NO

Sparks YES NO

Weber YES YES