One early response to grassroots opposition to frac sand mining in the driftless region's working landscape was "It's just sand." Now, as the issue continues to gain national coverage--despite the absence of most of the state's environmental groups in the citizen-led battle--the oil and gas industry are testing that message again.
Forbes staffer Chris Helman, who brags that he's based in "Houston, the energy capital of the world" sneers in Why Sand Is The Latest Front In The War On Fracking (Yes, Sand):
The anti-fracking crowd hasn’t been successful enough manufacturing unfounded fears about groundwater pollution to cause any meaningful slowdown in shale drilling and fracking. So they’ve found a new target for their antagonism — sand dust.
Fracking, of course, requires hundreds of tons of sand, enough to fill dozens of rail cars, for each well. That sand has to come from somewhere, and in recent years even oil companies like EOG Resources EOG +1.44% have bought and built their own sand mines, many of them up in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Those states are blessed with an abundance of fine-grained sand perfect for injecting down into shale formations. In the past three years more than 100 mines have reportedly sprung up. The USGS figures that sand mining is up 60% in two years to nearly 50 million tons a year.
Towns like Winona, Minn are now facing calls for the monitoring of silica dust and diesel fumes emitted by the sand mines. There’s a real concern that when tiny particles of airborne silica are inhaled and get lodged in the lungs they could lead to silicosis.
Just this week Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, home to more new sand mines than anywhere else in the country, has imposed a year-long moratorium on issuing new mine permits while it studies health impacts.
That's nice, dear. Helman wants his readers to believe that citizen scrutiny of industrial sand mining has just begun, formented merely as a front against fracking itself, and that the moratorium in Trempealeau County came about simply out of health concerns.
Indeed, there seems to be a bit of a low-grade industrial panic going on, with big media coming in to whitewash the stories of local corruption Tony Kennedy has been digging up at the Star Tribune about Trempealeau County--and how people in Iowa and even Walker's Wisconsin are learning to say no to the open veins of frac sand mining.
Concern in Trempealeau County: air quality and corruption
Kennedy reported in Wisconsin county board approves moratorium on frac sand mines:
After issuing more frac sand mining permits than any other county in Minnesota or Wisconsin over the past 36 months, Trempealeau County will take a hiatus to consider possible adverse health effects on citizens.The County Board, applauded by an overflow crowd, Monday night voted overwhelmingly in favor of a moratorium of up to a year on permitting new sand facilities or allowing existing sites to expand. . . .
The moratorium in Trempealeau County, which will start Aug. 30, is not unique. Several other counties and townships on both sides of the river have taken breaks to satisfy public concerns about a burgeoning new industry that has brought more than 125 mines, processing plants and rail sites to the region.
Remember, Helman wants his readers to think scrutiny of sand mining--Bluestem's been writing about it since the spring of 2011 (about the time Price of Sand filmmaker Jim Tittle started exploring the issue)--is a new shiny object. Kennedy is accurate in saying it's not unique.
But there's more in the Kennedy article:
But few communities have embraced frac sand mining with the pro-business fervor seen in Trempealeau. Monday’s vote came hard on the heels of ethics charges against a County Board supervisor who is being investigated for allegedly cloaking his own frac sand interests. The board member, David Suchla, denies any self-dealing and the case is under initial review by a special prosecutor in neighboring LaCrosse County. Suchla left Monday’s meeting when the moratorium discussion began and he did not vote. The measure passed 12-0, with two abstentions and three members not present to vote.
A previous attempt to enact a moratorium failed on an 8-8 vote in May, also with Suchla not voting. The revived measure which passed Monday focused solely on community health and safety issues.
Miller, who launched the investigation of Suchla with a written and sworn complaint last week, said she would “blow a holy gasket” if the health review committee includes anyone with a direct financial interest in frac sand mining. ...
Newshound Kennedy broke the story of the investigation in In Wisconsin, county commissioner is accused of self-dealing over frac sand:
A Wisconsin prosecutor is investigating allegations that an elected official in the state’s most active frac sand county used his office to advance his own sand mining interests while cloaking them in secrecy.The fiery clash in Trempealeau County, just across the Mississippi River from Winona, is the latest ethics controversy to surface in the region’s burgeoning frac sand industry, as some officials seek to own a piece of the boom even while sitting on powerful local boards that regulate mining.
In the Trempealeau County case, Board Supervisor David Suchla has been accused of threatening a high-level county administrator to keep silent about a business relationship Suchla had with a large Texas-based frac sand producer interested in mining sand in Suchla’s district. The administrator, Environment and Land Use Director Kevin Lien, recently discovered Suchla’s business ties from a document that someone inadvertently left on a table at the courthouse.
Check it out. And yet, the moratorium may not be effective in slowing the rush, Kennedy reports in his most recent story, Big Texas frac sand company eyes 3rd Wisconsin facility:
Hi-Crush Partners of Houston, Texas, is getting close to making a public announcement about its latest frac sand mining project in western Wisconsin. The publicly traded company has been negotiating with property owners in Trempealeau County on hilly, agricultural lands between the City of Independence and the county seat of Whitehall.
On Monday of this week, six local property owners and Hi-Crush Whitehall LLC submitted a Petition for Direct Annexation by Unanimous Approval to the City of Whitehall. . . .
The Trempealeau County Board of Supervisors this week adopted a moratorium of up to one year against additional permitting of frac sand facilities, but it's not clear if the temporary ban would slow the Hi-Crush project. For instance, there was testimony at the public hearing for the moratorium that cities within the county could continue to issue new frac sand operating permits. Annexation of frac sand sites by cities has become a hot topic in Trempealeau County and elsewhere in Wisconsin because it undercuts county control of a major new land use and robs townships and counties of important tax base.
Wisconsin River project denied
Sand mining experienced another setback in the Badger State as Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board rejects permit for contested frac sand mine, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday:
The vote Thursday night was 6-2 against the mine, which has been proposed on land just a couple of miles east of the Iowa border on the Wisconsin River. In an earlier memo, somemembers of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board called a frac sand mine a bad idea but added that a "loophole" in state law might require the board to approve the permit.
"The members felt that visual intrusions from potential dust and lighting would cause the activity to become visible from the river," said Mark Cupp, executive director of the board. Cupp advised the board to approve the permits not because he necessarily thought the mine was a good idea but because he thought state law gave it no choice. He is not a voting member of the board.
A portion of state law requires the site to be at least 500 feet away from the river and not visible from the water when leaves are on the trees.
"The board felt there was enough gray area in the law to vote to deny," Cupp said.
Pattison Sand said it was disappointed with the board's decision. "The law is clearly written," said Beth Regan, a permits and compliance coordinator for the company.
Perhaps it's no surprise that the vote came after a bit of potential corruption came to light:
The decision comes a day after a lawsuit was filed against the Town of Bridgeport alleging that some who voted to approve local permits had a relative working for Pattison Sand.
Perhaps that sort of thing is bigger in Texas.
The New Republic: The Land Grab
Molly Redden reports in Scott Walker's Sand Grab: Wisconsin Wants a Piece of the Fracking Boom, No Matter Who Gets Hurt in the New Republic:
. . .The rapid industrialization of this corner of rural Wisconsin has sparked inevitable NIMBY clashes between miners and the farmers, retirees, and nth-generation locals who fret about unsightly dig sites and truck traffic. In Trempealeau County, home to a quarter of all new frac sand sites in the state, residents overwhelmed state Senator Kathleen Vinehout’s inbox with exactly those complaints. “It was clanging railroad cars at night, underground blasting that put cracks in the walls of peoples’ kitchens,” she said. “I had emails that said, ‘I don’t know what they’re doing, but there’s sand all over the inside of my house.’”
Yet it’s what Wisconsinites can’t see that scares public health advocates. Blasting, digging, crushing, drying, sorting, and transporting silica sand can cause microscopic flecks of crystalline silica—particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers, or PM2.5, which is about one-twentieth the width of a strand of human hair—to become airborne and, when inhaled by humans, they can become lodged in the deep tissue of the lungs. . . .
A report published this year by the state Environmental Quality Board in Minnesota—where a nascent frac sand mining business is also taking root—concluded: “More study is needed, but there is evidence of potential health risks in areas of elevated silica concentration.” . . .
No wonder the industrial sand industry in Minnesota worked so hard--but failed--to cut the EQB out new legislation regulating sand mining in Minnesota.
Minnesota's sand mining online
The Star Tribune's Josephine Marcotty reported in Frac sand mining in MN gets a website:
Six state agencies created a portal to their frac sand activities and rule-making around the industry. Officials said the site is geared toward easy navigation of the regulatory landscape. In particular, it will help people interested in what the state is doing to develop new rules for managing and permitting silica sand projects.
The website, silicasand.mn.gov, provides links to each of the state agencies involved with making the new rules or managing activities involved with the mining, transportation and processing of silica sand. They include the Environmental Quality Board (EQB), the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), Pollution Control Agency (PCA), Department of Health, Department of Transportation and Department of Agriculture.
The agencies named to do rule-making in the legislation are the EQB, DNR and PCA. The others don’t have rule responsibilities but were included in the website because they are closely tied with issues in the industry.
Developments in Goodhue County and Winona
As we've noted, concerns about industrial-scale sand-mining aren't a sudden scheme sprung from the head of anti-fracking activists. In early August, Elizabeth Dunbar at MPR reported in Goodhue Co. extends frac sand moratorium:
Goodhue County commissioners voted today to extend the county's moratorium on frac sand mining by 180 days when the current ban expires next month.The vote comes following a $73,000 study on silica sand mining and the county's policy options.
The committee that completed the study recommended against extending the county's ban, but two of the county board's five commissioners have expressed concerns over silica sand mining. In June, commissioners approved an ordinance that would allow limited frac sand mining, and those rules could take effect when the moratorium expires. . . .
The ordinance was approved after two years of debate, MPR reported in June.
In Winona, the Daily News' Mary Juhl reports in Planning commission to look at frac sand air monitoring:
The city of Winona’s planning commission plans to take another look Monday at monitoring ambient air for frac sand, amid competing arguments that the city needs to study the air and that it lacks the resources and expertise.
The proposal has bounced around the city for months. The city’s Citizens Environmental Quality Committee has recommended that the city begin studying air at facilities for frac sand particles, but the planning commission has expressed doubts that not only the city, but the state is unprepared to do so because, among other issues, there are no established standards for what would be considered pollution.
As the article notes, the proposal has bounced around for months. Thirty-five protestors were arrested in April 2013, but this wasn't the first protest in Winona. In February 2012, 40 protestors blocked the streets. Hundreds of people came to the Minnesota state capitol this spring, leading to the compromise that required a permit for sand mines located within a mile of a trout stream.
The industry can claim anti-sand mining sentiment is something new under the sun. They're wrong.
Photo: Sand mining in Wisconsin. Photo by Jim Tittle.
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