At last evening's excellent "Let's Talk About Sand" Castoria performance in Chatfield

At last evening's excellent "Let's Talk About Sand" Castoria performance in Chatfield, a representative of the mining industry assured us that frac sand mining is being done responsibly along the Minnesota River Valley by family businesses, and that the industry wants to work with communities to hear their concerns and avoid problems.

  He stated that along the Mississippi, those bluffs should not be mined. He calmly stated that northern Minnesota has a thriving tourism industry along with a long culture of mining.  He omitted the reality of different geology and amount of area to compare Northern and Southeastern Minn.  Neither did he mention how the Poly-Met project is will damage tourism in Northern Minn. He smoothly repeated the usual assurances which he and other industry lobbyists gave throughout the last legislative session.

  The current world market means a temporary lull in the need for our frac sand, but that non-renewable resource will still be under our whole region when the world market wants it. We need to move past complacency and put protections in place to not be caught off-guard when that time inevitably comes.

  In case we have forgotten, there is a map on Land Stewardship Project's website which shows "Locations of 11 Frac Sand Mines (in SE Minn) Proposed by Minnesota Sands, with Proposed Size in Acres" at  http://landstewardshipproject.org/repository/1/968/frac_mine_map.pdf

Wishing you well,

Bonita