(C) Common Dreams
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From Farmland to Frac Sand [1]

['Lisa Held', 'Kate Nelson', 'Christina Cooke', 'David Bacon', 'Virginia Gewin', 'Ron Knox', 'Gabriel Pietrorazio', 'Ashka Naik', 'Anne Marshall-Chalmers', 'Andy Fisher']

Date: 2022-07-19

This article is part of our series of in-depth investigations. Got a tip? Please contact us on our secure email at civileats-at-protonmail.com.

One Monday in June, excavators were tearing into a field in Wedron, Illinois where the nubs of last season’s dried corn stalks were still sticking out of the ground. Behind where the crew worked, strips of earth had been carved out like steps on a wide staircase descending to the bottom of a deep pit. On the far side, fine sand the color of snow was piled in front of soaring, solid walls of sandstone. Picture standing on a ledge looking down into the biggest rock quarry you’ve ever seen. Then, enlarge that image 100 times, whitewash it, and add turquoise blue pools of wastewater. This is silica mining.

Fracking, a process used to extract natural gas and petroleum, depends on silica sand, or “frac sand” to produce the fossil fuels. A single fracking site can use millions of pounds of sand. The sand is blasted into wells to keep fissures in the rock open so that oil and gas can be released. In the Midwest, farmland is being irreversibly lost in pursuit of silica sand. Wedron Silica, which is now owned by Ohio-based Covia, has been expanding this particular mine for years and now owns at least 2,500 acres in and around the tiny village. It’s just one of several that Covia owns across LaSalle County, Illinois, 90 miles southwest of Chicago. Here, U.S. Silica, Smart Sand, and other companies are also actively mining. Together, the companies have purchased hundreds of parcels of land and now own more than 9,000 acres in LaSalle, a Civil Eats investigation has found. The majority of those acres are former or current farmland. Silica mining is also prevalent in other parts of Illinois and regions of Wisconsin and Missouri. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), LaSalle County’s farmland acreage dropped 5 percent from 2012 to 2017, to 573,000 acres. But many of the acres still identified as farmland are owned by mining companies and leased to farmers. Across the street from the mining activity in Wedron, for example, Covia owns 600 acres, where tiny corn plants were just starting to green up in neat rows. In 2018, the county approved the company’s application to expand into those farm fields, despite the fact that LaSalle County Soil and Water Conservation District discouraged the decision based on a site assessment score that identified the land as “highly productive.” Digging could start at any time. “You’re taking this short-term demand for sand, and you’re totally sacrificing the long-term agricultural potential.” Early in the pandemic, declines in fossil fuel prices led to a big drop in demand for frac sand. Now, with oil and gas prices at historic highs with no relief in sight, demand is soaring. In February, one energy consultant told Reuters that current prices for frac sand were “unheard of in the industry’s modern history” and that he expected them to go higher. “You’re taking this short-term demand for sand, and you’re totally sacrificing the long-term agricultural potential,” says Ted Auch, the Great Lakes program coordinator for the FracTracker Alliance, who has been following the issue for years. While the more immediate impacts of fracking on communities where the drilling itself takes place have been widely covered, silica sand mining has mostly remained in the shadows. Even on the ground, most residents and tourists visiting LaSalle County’s state parks cannot see the gaping, miles-long craters that extend across the landscape, hidden as they are behind man-made hills called berms, most planted with thick vegetation.

The progression of digging in a Wedron, Illinois silica mine. (Photo by Lisa Held)

Yet some local residents are watching the mines spring to life with new intensity. “They really are accelerating,” said Joy Konczak, who lives across from a Smart Sand mine in North Utica, where she said that blasting regularly shakes her home. “I was out of town the other day and the neighbor called me and said, ‘Oh my god! My curio cabinet just walked across the floor.” As the mining picks up, its impacts intersect with other pressing issues. According to American Farmland Trust, farmland is being lost to development at a rate of about 2,000 acres per day, even as the federal government, private industry, and many advocacy groups are betting on that land as a vehicle for carbon sequestration. Meanwhile, young, beginning, and low-income farmers—some of whom are working to farm in ways that require fewer fossil fuels to begin with—are being priced out of land ownership due to development and a growing interest in farmland investment. County officials have supported the expansion of mines primarily based on the industry’s promises of jobs and economic growth, but in Wedron, for example, there is little left of the village that isn’t mine offices or infrastructure. In the town center, frac sand is loaded directly onto rail cars on the banks of the Fox River. Drivers have to navigate over the sandy tracks to cross the water. At the entrance to the processing plant, the local post office, which the company bought in 2019, sits shuttered, in disrepair. Civil Eats sent detailed questions to company representatives at Covia, U.S. Silica, and Smart Sand about their expansion and other issues raised in this story. Representatives at Covia and U.S. Silica did not respond. At Smart Sand, finance manager Josh Jayne said, “Thanks for reaching out. We have no comment at this time.” Shaped by Sand

Past a gray stone fireplace, walls packed with family photos, and a home office tucked between the kitchen and living room, Diane and Phil Gassman sit at their dark wood dining room table with their neighbors Cheryl Illman and Joy Konczak. When they joke about living on an island, Illman spreads out a 2014 zoning map from the village of North Utica, about 20 miles southwest of Wedron.

From left: Phil Gassman, Diane Gassman, Joy Konczak, Cheryl Illman. (Photo by Lisa Held)

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[1] Url: https://civileats.com/2022/07/19/from-farmland-to-frac-sand/

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