Any enforceable standards for neighbors
The grains of sand needed for fracking are very round and very hard. Bobby King, an organizer with the Minnesota-based Land Stewardship Project, says the Driftless Area – so-called because the glaciers never covered the land – is an area of beautiful bluffs and deep valleys, with some of the best trout fishing in the country, whose economy depends on agriculture and tourism.
“So, in comes frac sand mining, which is basically just strip mining,” says King. “They take off the trees if it’s forested; they blow off the top of the bluff and they begin hauling out sand until the bluff is gone. It’s devastating.”
Sand is made of silica, and King says that’s of great concern to residents, as the mining process causes dust to blow around the area. A build-up of silica dust in the lungs can cause serious health problems.
“Silica causes silicosis, an incurable disease, and long-term exposure to silica dust is what causes that,” explains King. “We have standards at the OSHA level, at the workplace level for workers, but we don’t have right now any enforceable standards for neighbors to frac sand facilities.”
Frac sand mining is most intense in Wisconsin, where a state government controlled by “free market” Republicans has welcomed the industry and offered few environmental or public health safeguards.
One estimate from the Civil Society Institute is that 50 million tons of frac sand were mined in the state in 2013.
“The true action that we have seen from citizens in Wisconsin has been at the local level,” says Stacy Harbaugh of Midwest Environmental Advocates, an organization based in the state capital, Madison. “Citizens are getting together, they’re lobbying their local governments and they’re really paying attention to such things like zoning laws and local regulations on how industry can expand and where they can be located in their areas. People are really coming together in local communities and discussing what they really value in terms of protecting their own property, protecting their water, protecting their air, and really valuing their natural resources.”