FRACTRACKER ALLIANCE
The road to the Swenson household in Jackson County runs like so many roads in western Wisconsin. It crosses a cornfield, then cozies up to the base of a ridge and follows the contour of the land. Just around the corner, amid tall pines, the Swensons’ modest split-level home nestles alongside a splendid pinnacle of sandstone.
Through the Swensons’ front door, a bank of windows gives a commanding view of the valley. Just a few years ago, it was a classic rural landscape, punctuated by a few rooflines, fields, and some forest on the next ridge. Now the vista is dominated by an industrial sand mine, dismembering that same ridge.
Just a few years ago, it was a classic rural landscape, punctuated by a few rooflines, fields, and some forest on the next ridge. Now the vista is dominated by an industrial sand mine, dismembering that same ridge.
Dwight Swenson picks up a map of the township and points out the tract, clearly highlighted in pink. The color is sun-faded, so it takes a moment to register just how much pink there is in Curran township: more than a third is occupied by active or planned frac sand mines.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, pumps a cocktail of water and chemicals into shale formations deep underground. The pressure creates microfractures in the rock, releasing oil and natural gas. Sand is a critical ingredient, a proppant added to the mixture to “prop” open the cracks. The sand must be the right size, shape, and strength.
Fracking has upended the U.S. energy economy and raises unsettling environmental questions. While there is no fracking in Wisconsin, the state’s western counties provide much of the sand used in the process. Between 2007 and 2015, a sand rush established 101 active and permitted mines and dozens of processing and rail facilities. State data lists ninety-two active and thirty-two inactive facilities, and four undergoing reclamation. Nearly half are in just three counties: Trempealeau, Barron, and Jackson.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has allowed frac sand mining to proceed under rules governing common sand and gravel pits: Owners just need a perfunctory air permit and an approved reclamation plan.
The low regulatory bar also minimizes the need for public notices.
“We didn’t know a thing about this—absolutely quiet—until the day before the reclamation permit public hearing,” says Swenson. Within months, the land was denuded. Then came the blasting, the dust, and a 24/7 industrial soundtrack. His wife, Ruth—a lifelong swimmer and physical education instructor—can’t breathe like she used to.
Swenson heads across his backyard, and up the pinnacle at the corner of his property. It’s a short, steep climb over sandy soil. Waiting at the top is Gretchen Gehrke, a data and advocacy expert visiting from the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (widely known as the Public Lab).
It’s an incredible vantage. Cattle graze to the north and a stream sparkles southward toward the Trempealeau River. But we can’t stop gawping at the moonscape of the mine. “That’s our ant farm,” says Swenson as the sand trucks queue for their loads.
He and Gehrke plan to inspect a trail camera set up in a stream below. Public Lab is developing ways of using trail cameras to document visual pollution, and she and her colleagues want to check Swenson’s setup. By creating an open source laboratory for refining low cost tools and methods, Public Lab hopes to get citizens more involved in environmental monitoring.
Swenson is thinking ahead: He wants to measure the turbidity and temperature of the stream. “It seems like that would get me a clue as to whether that stream has a fever,” he says.
One of Swenson’s goals is to cast light on how the fracking industry claims trade secret protections to limit scrutiny of the chemicals they use. To learn more about a sand-coating facility nearby, he’s challenging the DNR’s decision to allow the company to redact chemical names from documents released to the public.
‘We didn't know a thing about this — absolutely quiet — until the day before the reclamation permit public hearing,’ says Swenson. Within months, the land was denuded. Then came the blasting, the dust, and a 24/7 industrial soundtrack.
“This is their last gasp,” says Swenson of the fossil fuel industry. “I think their shelf life is a lot shorter than what they are projecting to the general public. I think they are scared.”
The air-monitoring equipment in the Swensons’ yard costs more than $25,000 and was paid for by concerned citizens.
It’s maintained by Dr. Crispin Pierce, director of the Environmental Public Health Program at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. You won’t find a more cordial critic of the frac sand industry than Pierce. He stresses that he’s not opposed to mining and talks up his students now working in the industry. He punctuates his presentations with assurances that there is no acute health crisis unfolding and no need to panic.
All the same, he’s disappointed by the standards and practices of the DNR. Only about 15 percent of frac sand facilities have been asked to measure PM10 particles. PM stands for particulate matter, which can be solids or liquids, suspended in the air. PM10 measures 10 micrometers or smaller. Pierce believes a better measure would be PM2.5, or 2.5 micrometers and smaller. The average human hair is 30 times larger than a PM2.5 particle. In part thanks to their small size, PM2.5 particles stay airborne for as long as two weeks. When inhaled, they can penetrate deep into the human body, and may increase long-term risk of cardiovascular and lung disease, including cancer.
PM2.5 silica (sand) dust is a known occupational hazard, yet the DNR appears unconcerned by PM2.5 around sand mines. “We’re consistently measuring increased PM2.5 levels at these sites compared to the regional background level,” says Pierce, expressing frustration that the DNR does not independently monitor this risk.
For the last four years, Pierce has tried to place one of his instruments next to the DNR’s regional monitoring station, to compare the results. The agency has declined, citing “additional staff time and resources that we cannot spare.” Pierce suspects the refusals are being driven by “things beyond science, beyond economics.”
“Science is in the hands of institutions in a way that is exclusive,” adds Stevie Lewis, a member of the Public Lab team. “Community science has huge potential to help with local accountability.”
The frac sand industry was already building momentum in Wisconsin when Republican Scott Walker was elected governor in 2010. He launched a full frontal assault on the DNR, long regarded as one of the nation’s most professional and politically independent state resource management agencies. The agency has endured budget cuts, hostile political appointees, and a steady loss of science and professional staff.
“Other states have the sand, but they’re doing what Wisconsin would have done in the past,” explains Kimberlee Wright, executive director at Midwest Environmental Advocates, which provides legal support to communities. “They would have looked at these cumulative impacts and slowed things down [to get] a handle on protecting public health and the environment.”
“It’s wrong that the state has not created regulations that fit the frac sand mining industry,” she says. “Without citizens acting on behalf of public health, just nothing would be getting done.”
By ceding control to local governments, the state also stacked the deck in favor of the mining companies. “There are so many fights,” says Wright. “Brushfires everywhere rather than one big fire that everyone is working on.” And because every township and every mine are a little different, it’s harder to construct a blueprint for resistance.
Thomas Pearson, a cultural anthropologist teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, joined the frac sand resistance in his new hometown of Menomonie, documenting the movement in When the Hills Are Gone: Frac Sand Mining and the Struggle for Community, to be published this fall by the University of Minnesota Press.
“Many people start attending hearings and town meetings, often for the first time, and expect their voices to be heard,” he says. “When they encountered the influence of corporate interests and, especially four or five years ago, the aura of inevitability around it, people became very frustrated.”
Some walked away but others held firm, asking tougher questions. “It put them on a very different path of thinking about politics, their community, democracy, the environment,” Pearson says. “Those places have been more successful at having actual influence over whether or not mining occurs and under what circumstances.”
Sheila Danielson of Black River Falls is one of those newly activated citizens, motivated by the many impacts of sand mines in her county. It was Danielson who first alerted the Swensons to their new neighbors.
Now she takes me to another house, near another mine, where the owner talks about the stress, the noise, the loss of property values and sleep. The woman’s family, it emerges, is seeking a settlement with the mine. Many people who have sold or leased their land have signed nondisclosure agreements restricting their ability to talk about price, plans, or even the industry. It seems only fair to ask: Does she want to be talking with a reporter?
Legal limits to what you can say “should be a red flag,” Danielson says. “Greed and self-interest, those conflicts, it’s just gotten worse. There is no community left. There is no neighbor helping neighbor.”
She falters, suddenly worried, and the conversation winds down. On the road again, Danielson talks about the corrosive effect of secrecy underlying the mining boom. Legal limits to what you can say “should be a red flag,” Danielson says. “Greed and self-interest, those conflicts, it’s just gotten worse. There is no community left. There is no neighbor helping neighbor.”
Next door in Alma township, Tom Gearing recounts a similar tale of a woman who wanted to build a retirement home on family land. She’d heard rumors of a mine, so she asked her neighbor. He told her he didn’t know anything about it, so she built. Turns out he had already sold out his land. “He stood right there and lied to her,” Gearing says. “And she trusted him.”
Several years ago, a realtor approached Gearing seeking his fifty-three acres for a potential mine. “We declined,” he says. Since then, he’s seen the issue split his community, dividing friends and even families. “People won’t talk to their neighbors,” he says. “They’ll go out of their way to avoid contact. That’s just wrong.”
Gearing, a retired agronomist, was moved to seek election to the Alma town board. He’s lived all but three years of his life in Alma. His brothers run a nearby organic dairy farm, and he believes the rolling hills—now being leveled for their sand—define the character of his community. “We live in a geologically interesting place,” he says. “I’d like this to be a beautiful part of the world, with minor modifications, for my grandchildren and theirs.”
In April, Gearing won the election. “I’ll do my part to make sure that they toe the line,” he says. “That they don’t pollute the air, the water. It needs to happen on the local level.”
The last two years have been relatively quiet in frac sand country. Oil prices collapsed in early 2015, putting fracking—and its hunger for sand—into neutral. This year could see an industry revival as oil prices recover. If the Trump Administration and Congress succeed in even a partial hobbling of the Environmental Protection Agency, the price-point where fracking becomes profitable again will drop.
But these external forces won’t go unchallenged in Wisconsin. Tom Gearing in Alma is ready. Dwight Swenson ran unopposed for the Curran town board. Sheila Danielson keeps connecting people and showing up for hearings. Public Lab is honing its tool kit while Midwest Environmental Advocates has its legal pad ready.
“I have seen this renaissance of democracy, of people willing to step up to public service,” says Wright. Communities have gotten stronger, and become more familiar with their rights, their obligations, their power.
“I just believe very deeply in the power of ordinary people,” she says. “Over time, that is what has protected our health and that is what has changed things.”