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Frac sand industry could get bigger
Posted: Monday, March 16, 2015 12:55 pm

By Jim Massey, Editor | [e-mail]

News Link: http://www.thecountrytoday.com/front_page/article_b99c7310-cc05-11e4-b393-bbd9f0cd45dc.html

MADISON — The Wis­con­sin in­dus­trial sand min­ing in­dus­try has grown rapidly over the last five years, but more ex­pan­sion could be com­ing in the fu­ture, the Depart­ment of Nat­u­ral Re­sources’ west­ern re­gional di­rec­tor said March 11.

Dan Bau­mann, the DNR’s spokesman for in­dus­trial sand min­ing, told mem­bers of the Wis­con­sin Board of Agri­cul­ture, Trade and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion that in­dus­trial sand sites — also known as frac sand — have ex­panded from less than a half-dozen five years ago to more than 150 in 2015. Most of the sand mines are in west­ern Wis­con­sin.

The mines pro­duced about 30 mil­lion tons of frac sand in 2014 that left Wis­con­sin on trucks and rail cars for gas and oil fields in North Dakota, Ok­la­homa, Texas and Pen­nys­lva­nia.

“Depend­ing on which trade mag­a­zine you read, the state is still only at about one-third of (po­ten­tial),” Bau­mann said. “So when the price of a bar­rel of oil is high, we could be putting out 80 mil­lion tons.”

Bau­mann said there are still ap­pli­ca­tions com­ing into the DNR from in­dus­trial sand min­ing com­pa­nies, but get­ting those ap­pli­ca­tions through the per­mit­ting process and the mines opened some­times takes a long time.

“It is com­plex, work­ing with the town, county, the DNR and the (U.S. Army) Corps of Engi­neers,” Bau­mann said.

It is not un­usual for a mine site, com­plete with a rail­road spur, to cost $100 mil­lion, he said.

“If they’re mak­ing a $100 mil­lion in­vest­ment, they’re not plan­ning on pick­ing up and leav­ing in 10 years,” he said. “They’re look­ing to be a neigh­bor for 30 to 50 years.”

Bau­mann said the sup­ply of in­dus­trial sand isn’t lim­it­less in Wis­con­sin, “but it would seem to me that in our life­times, we’re not go­ing to run out.”

“When you think of ev­ery hill in Buf­falo County, that’s a lot of sand,” DATCP Board mem­ber Mike Dum­mer said.

“And Chippewa and Eau Claire and Trem­pealeau coun­ties,” Bau­mann said.

Bau­mann ad­mit­ted the sand mines have di­vided res­i­dents into those who be­lieve min­ing will be an eco­nomic boom for their com­mu­nity and those who fear the mines will have ad­verse ef­fects on hu­man health, road safety and the en­vi­ron­ment.

One landowner might sell land or min­ing rights for mil­lions of dol­lars, while his or her neigh­bor “is strug­gling to pay off the trac­tor,” Bau­mann said. “There are neigh­bors who have been neigh­bors for 30 years who are now en­e­mies.”

Wis­con­sin is a prime site for in­dus­trial sand min­ing be­cause of the qual­ity of the sand, Bau­mann said. As much as 70 per­cent of the fine-grain sand ex­tracted from the mines is us­able by gas and oil com­pa­nies for a type of oil and nat­u­ral gas drilling known as hy­draulic frac­tur­ing, or frack­ing.

Wis­con­sin is the na­tional leader in in­dus­trial sand pro­duc­tion.

“We have the most mines and the most sand — prob­a­bly as much as the rest of the coun­try put to­gether,” Bau­mann said. “It’s an in­dus­try that’s go­ing to be here a while.”

Bau­mann said the min­ing com­pa­nies know they have im­pacts in their com­mu­ni­ties and gen­er­ally have been good to work with. So far, no air sam­ples taken at the mine sites have ex­ceeded health stan­dards, he said.

While a typ­i­cal gravel mine might be 20 or 40 acres, the foot­print of an in­dus­trial sand mine might be 5,000 acres, with 400 to 600 acres open at a time, Bau­mann said. All of the sand is shipped out of Wis­con­sin.

A large plant can han­dle about 1 mil­lion met­ric tons a year.

The DNR doesn’t reg­u­late noise, light pol­lu­tion, blast­ing or land-use zon­ing, and some­times coun­ties and lo­cal mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties haven’t ma­tured enough to ad­dress those is­sues, Bau­mann said.

“A lot of town and county boards are re­ally chal­lenged with try­ing to man­age these sit­u­a­tions,” Dum­mer said.

The DNR does reg­u­late wa­ter use and air qual­ity, so that’s where the agency in­ter­acts with the mine op­er­a­tors, Bau­mann said. The DNR has 100 staff mem­bers who are in­volved with in­dus­trial sand min­ing at some level.

Some of the en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues as­so­ci­ated with the mines have been bore­hole aban­don­ment, where the min­ing com­pany will drill a hole to gauge how far it might have to drill to ground­wa­ter, and then leave the hole open; the dry­ing up of wet­lands or neigh­bors’ wells due to high wa­ter us­age; and runoff from the mines into sur­face wa­ters.

The agency has worked with the Depart­ment of Jus­tice on some en­force­ment ac­tions against the min­ing com­pa­nies, Bau­mann said, with for­fei­tures rang­ing from $20,000 to $200,000.

“Our phi­los­o­phy is to be con­sis­tent, get the prob­lem fixed, and do it in a timely fash­ion,” he said.

Some min­ing com­pa­nies plan to plant the land into grass when they are done ex­tract­ing the sand, while oth­ers might build a pond or a cran­berry bed, Bau­mann said.

The Nat­u­ral Re­sources Board is plan­ning to re­visit a 2012 im­pact study with a strate­gic anal­y­sis to get a bet­ter feel for the im­pact min­ing is hav­ing on the Wis­con­sin en­vi­ron­ment.

The DNR will be­gin the re­view this month and plans to com­plete the re­view within a year, Bau­mann said.