Here’s an overview of the concerns that have been raised about frac sand mining. We’ll glue this to the front page, update it as we go and write more-detailed posts on specific topics. But here’s a list to summarize things;
- Community — The old quote “if we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately” comes to mind. Will trusted leaders emerge to get us through this?
- Economic development — Who is thinking through the tradeoff between new jobs versus old, short-term jobs versus long-term ones, money that stays in the region versus fortunes made elsewhere at our expense?
- Environmental — Is anybody keeping an eye on air emissions and pollution, impact on groundwater, loss of natural and agricultural land, impact on forest projects, nuisance noise and dust, etc.?
- Health — Who’s minding the impacts of silica dust in the air and processing-plant chemicals in water supplies?
- Infrastructure — Who will pay for road repairs and will those commitments be honored?
- Leadership — Town and County officials are used to deciding issues like where to site a farmer’s barn. Are they ready to handle the onslaught of a sophisticated billion-dollar industry?
- Prices — Are local sand-producers getting a fair prices for their sand, or are they getting ripped off too — by slick mining-company representatives? Do you know what that sand is worth?
- Property values — Who’s keeping an eye out for the innocent bystanders who can’t escape the blight because their savings are tied up in nearby land?
- Regional development — This isn’t a one-county conversation or even a one-state conversation. Who’s reaching out to make sure that one unprepared county doesn’t become the easy “target of opportunity”?
- Restoration — How does the land get repaired once the sand is gone and designed-to-disappear local mining-companies have vanished?
- Road Safety — What’s the impact of 100’s or even 1000’s of heavy trucks (on a tight schedule) running across our sub-par roads? Who’s going to be accountable when a schoolbus full of kids gets in an accident with a runaway sand truck on one of our dugway roads?
- Transparency — Who is publishing good, fair, accurate, non-confrontational information about what’s going on? Is “good information” going to be available only for the insiders at the expense of all others? Rumors breed in the dark.