The Frac Sand Frisbee

More indications coming in that the frac sand boom in Buffalo County is mostly a line being fed to us by real-estate developers who put the deals together.

Word on the street is that Segerstrom is having some serious second thoughts about his mining project.  It turns out that there’s so much dirt in his sand that the much-heralded $30 million “dry processing” plant won’t work.  So he’s not shipping much sand (20 trucks/day instead of 200 and half of that is dirt), it’s going to a traditional plant up in Plum City and THEN getting shipped to Eau Claire (can you spell “not cost competitive?”).

Remember, Steve is the guy that destroyed his bluff to get to the “good” sand (after telling us we were crazy to worry about him doing that).  Now it turns out that the good sand isn’t so good and he’s totally wrecked his bluff.  Here’s a picture to remind you of how much destruction he’s done to his land.  Good luck selling this piece of property to anybody.  Nice job of stewardship and land-ethic.

Meanwhile, the same thing happened with the Klevgard Mine.  Shut down because of missed contracts, delays and (as we hear it) poor quality sand.  I’ll try to get up there and take a picture of his “mine” (it’s really just a little un-reclaimed dent in one of his fields) when the rain stops.

We’ve also heard that Reglin and Hesch were selling some of their sand as frac sand but stopped after a whole trainload of sand was rejected when it arrived at its destination in Texas last year – again, too much dirt and too little sand.

So here’s the question peepul.  Are there any operating, profitable, sustainable frac sand mines in Buffalo County?  Or are the real estate sharpsters just flummoxing our County Board, screwing our farmers, flipping their deals and leaving the locals to pay the price.

Just sayin’

At last, spring is finally arriving here in Buffalo County.  And what would spring be without some frac sand ruckus to report?  Plenty of updates to the Mines page this morning.

A new mine — River Valley Sands

The Moratorium concluded at the end of April and sure enough, we’ve got a brand new application submitted.  Here’s a link to the application submitted by River Valley Sands and here’s a link to the Adjacent Property Owners Notices they submitted with the app.

The promoter behind this project is a fella from Minnesota who owns a trucking company — and this project is a trucker’s dream come true.  The haul routes (either through Gilmanton and Nelson on their way to Wabasha, or down to Winona) are super-long.  So the farmers will make the usual buck-a-ton and the truckers will rake in the chips — 200 loads a day, 1.5 million tons a year.

Oh, and it looks like there’s about 6 MILES of conveyers needed in order to connect all the parcels in the project.  Here’s a map of the mine location and those haul routes (you can click on the map for a bigger version).

Seven Sands is back

Yep.  You may recall that the Glacier Sands application for this monstro mine was denied last year.  And if you’re really paying attention, you know that they filed an appeal of that decision.  What you’ll want to know is the latest news — they’re requesting that the judge put their appeal on hold so they can go ahead and submit a new application.  Pretty much in the “have your cake and eat it too” department.  If their new applications win, they’re all set.  If they’re denied, their appeal rises from the grave and they continue to fight.  Click HERE to read the letter they sent to the judge asking for cake.  I sure hope he denies their request.

Starkey Wash Plant is coming back too

This one’s still in the “trending rumor” department, but the information is pretty solid.  The first clue is that Seven Sands motion just above.  But lots of reliable sources are telling me that the REASON that Seven Sands application is coming back is because Glacier Sands really wants to bring the Starkey Wash Plant back around too.  Other contributing bits of information — word has it that the leases on that land have been renewed, plus lots of people have seen the Glacier folks poking around on the properties.  Makes sense, since Glacier Sands had a lawyer in every single County Board meeting, making sure that our new sand mining ordinance was gutted by our County Board.

So boys and girls, it’s time to start getting ready for some spring cleaning.

Hi all,

We filed the next big document in the R&J lawsuit today.  Here’s a link — it’s a pretty big PDF so be patient.

O’Connor Memo in Support of Reversal Upon Certiorari Review

I’ve been puzzling about frac sand stuff here on Frac Sand Frisbee for about a year, and it seems like it’s time to try to figure out a path towards some middle ground.  So I built me a model that I can use to both describe the problem (as shown in this first picture) and start describing a path out of it (in the second picture).  Then I made a 25 minute video that narrates all that for you.

Let me set expectations.  This is not an official position of anybody — drawing and exploring models like this one is just a thought exercise that I often go through when working on a hard puzzle.  So I’m pretty sure it’s not right (models are like that — they often miss something critical) but it’s a start.

I hope you’ll watch this and then maybe share it with some friends, or a group of friends, or a meeting.  It’s a conversation-starter, that’s all.  It’s got some ideas for things to do, but those may be wrong too.

All I know for sure is that leaving things the way they are is going to be unsatisfactory for everybody.  I’m hoping we can start working on a different approach.

Click HERE (or on the thumbnail) to watch the video.

Several friends encouraged me to drive up Sand Road and take a gander at the Segerstrom mine.  Remember how mine promoters were telling us how they weren’t going to mine up by the bluff line because that’s not the area they were interested in?  The pictures tell the tale. Click on the pictures for the full-sized versions (yep, there’s a full sized backhoe in there).

Funny thing about that mine — they don’t have a place to haul their sand yet.  They aspire to have it go to Wabasha, but that’s a ways off.  Wait till they start hauling.

Update

Photo info — Taken with Marcie’s Panasonic Lumix FZ150, 3 bracketed shots +/- two F-stops, HDR combined photo using Photomatix Pro.

Distribution license: Creative Commons Attribution.