Letter to the Editor:
Recently, I saw the documentary film The Price of Sand. It deals with frac sand mining in
Wisconsin and Minnesota. Before seeing the film, I hadn’t thought much about the topic,
but a friend passed along the announcement for the film, and I checked it out to see what all
the fuss was about.
My vision of sand mining was of the sand and gravel pits that have always dotted the
Wisconsin landscape, producing building materials, a few trucks, a little noise and some
dust. Frac sand mines are of another dimension. They’re huge. Many cover several hundred
acres. They’re deep. The process is to scape off the topsoil and the over burden to get to the
sand, which may be in a seam 50 feet wide. They cause dust, noise and traffic jams.
Clearly, the film was not impartial—the makers don’t like frac sand mines, but the
testimony of the people featured in the film was genuine. A farm wife who developed
asthma, because of the dust generated by a neighboring mine, told of how she now had to
wear a mask when she left her house. Even that did not fully relieve her symptoms. Only
moving away from the dust would do that, but the value of her home and farm had fallen so
low that selling wasn’t an option. No one wants to live next to a frac sand mine.
The rural homeowner, who thought that her family had found paradise until a mine opened,
told of feeling trapped, since her home had lost so much value. Now trucks rolled past her
paradise 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Blasts shake her house. The mine’s flood lights
eliminate nighttime, and sand dust covers every surface in her house. And she cannot move.
Business owners, in once picturesque river towns, told of lost business as the tourists shy
away from business centers and country roads constantly jammed with trucks.
A speaker after the film told us that every year, sand equal in volume to 21 Sears Towers is
hauled from Wisconsin. Another noted that non-metallic mining had virtually no state
environmental regulations, since those laws were passed before anyone had thought about
frac sand mining. Still another explained that frac sand mine dust was a major problem
because it hasn’t weathered like normal agricultural dust, so it still has sharp edges. Under
a microscope, it looks like shattered glass. Finally, the organizer of the event noted that frac
sand mining companies focus on jurisdictions without zoning laws, because it was much
easier to site a mine.
We can argue forever about the desirability of the process of fracing and of frac sand
mining. Fracing does give us gas and oil and frac sand mining does produce some jobs. But,
if your town or county doesn’t have zoning laws, you won’t even be at the table as mines
are sited and begin operations. Not being at the table, you won’t have any input into where
they locate or what restrictions are placed on their operations. Without zoning laws, you
also won’t be able to extract enough compensation from the mines to cover the cost of the
impact on local roads, water supplies or land values. So be sure that those zoning laws are
in place, before the mines open.
Sincerely,