

Fri, 2012-06-29 10:47Steve Horn
Steve Horn's picture








“The state's water supplies are also threatened as sand mining destroys sandstone formations which serve as giant filters for local aquifers.” Sara Jerving of PR Watch wrote. “The mining process can use thousands of gallons of water which can also deplete aquifers.”

The “frac sand rush” has been an uphill battle for small towns and municipalities that are trying to fight, or at the very least, attempt to negotiate with large corporations, with compartively little governmental oversight to deal with corporate behemoths such as EOG Resources, mirroring in many important ways the shale gas rush.

Cities and concerned citizens have done their best to keep up with the boom, but have no precedent to look for, no previous legislation to protect themselves, their infrastructure (see: roads and heavy trucks rolling through), their groundwater and their air.

Enter “Sand Land”

To further introduce the world to the impacts of frac sand mining, DeSmogBlog presents “Sand Land,” a short video report filmed and produced by Milwaukee, WI by photo-journalist and film-maker, Spencer Chumbley of 414 Wire, co-reported on with DeSmogBlog Research Fellow, Steve Horn. The film serves as a short audio-visual primer on the issue.

We encourage you to watch and share it with friends, colleagues, and family.


Stay tuned for much more to come from DeSmogBlog on one particularly powerful sand-mining corporation, EOG Resources, formerly known as the now infamous Enron Oil and Gas, a little explored fossil fuel industry giant that does it all: frac sand miningfrackingpipelines, and LNG terminals.

Image credit: Sara Jerving | PRWatch


Previous Comments

The sand mines have produced sand for other purposes before fracking came along, including glass making. Before the current boom, there were 5 mines and 5 processing facilities. Now, there are 63 mines and 36 processing facilities. There are no state permits required, each county handles it on their own. All they need is a reclamation plan. At a minimum, the counties and state need to beef up their inspections, given the 10-fold increase in the number of mines.

Last month, one of the new frac sand mines spilled their waste sand & silt into a creek that contaminated the Saint Croix River:


Oh come on, “prehistoric sand”? Are you kidding me? ALL rock (and sand) is prehistoric, unless it just recently was spewed out of a volcano and cooled.

You guys are just grasping here. I mean, is there ever any good news to come from this blog other than being happy when your enemies (Heartland, are down?

You’re just increasing the credibility gap evry time you post another article like this, don’t you see? Your almost as bad as Joe Romm’s Climate Progress now, and that is most definitely NOT a compliment.

I read a ton of Climate related news on both sides of the debate every day and I’m really shocked at the marked increase in rheoric on the pro-warmist side. At least WUWT tries to report some of the science now and then.


I kinda agree…  Apart from your last 2 paragraphs.

I mean… sand or no sand… A big company shows up, it will leave a mess.  Pick an industry. Fracing is just a side show.

In the same vain.. increased warm weather (Climate Change) brings people in the way of gun fire.  But I’d be loath to write about it in that light.


There’s an API PDF out there that goes into it. Sand that was formed less than 60 million years avoid usually not spherical enough. Only 2 or 3 formations in the USA can produce sand that they can use. It is a limited resource. How limited? That’s a question the regulators should ask.

A lot of the concern seems to be with potential threats to aquifers and runoff of silt from processing plants. Oh, and the copious amounts of water di
verted from the water cycle.

New sand, separate particles of quartz and sometimes other minerals, is being formed all the time along certain seacoasts.  The waves pound rocks against each other and the quartz particles fall out of the slowly dissolving matrix of other, less stable, minerals.

Before being so disassociated, the parent rock, being a mixture of various minerals, has another name.  For example granite is a mixure of quartz and feldspar usually with a little magnitite or mica.  The feldspars are unstable in the presense of water, eventually weathering into clay.