Mining....

2ndHand

5 year old buck +
Well the weekend started out pretty good until one of the adjacent property owners (from out of state) stopped over to tell us they signed a one year option to sell their property (130 acres) for sand mining. It's not a sure thing - I would say probably less than 50-50, but it kinda puts my plans for this property on hold. Time will tell...
 
That sucks. I hear people selling for frac sand are getting top dollar for the land. What county is this in?
 
I don't know much about frac mining but it appears to be hitting the central wisconsin area like a foreign invasion.
 
That sucks. I hear people selling for frac sand are getting top dollar for the land. What county is this in?

Jackson
 
I don't know much about frac mining but it appears to be hitting the central wisconsin area like a foreign invasion.


Most of it is ending up here in my backyard (NE PA)....it is a like a foreign invasion on this end as well.
 
Phil, are they drilling for oil or natural gas by you? From what I gather the sand they mine around here is later used elsewhere in the drilling process for oil and natural gas. Townships by us have been scrambling to adopt ordinances to somewhat control these mines.
 
Phil, are they drilling for oil or natural gas by you? From what I gather the sand they mine around here is later used elsewhere in the drilling process for oil and natural gas. Townships by us have been scrambling to adopt ordinances to somewhat control these mines.


Both....we have natural gas and they are finding oil in some parts of the shale formations as well. It was a mad dash for the townships, municipalities, counties, state etc here as well. I live on top of the Marcellus shale formation that holds vast reserves of NG and oil as well.
 

I have friends that own land in Jackson County. Their land is very close to the Badger Mining Corp's Taylor Plant. I've heard rumor thru other friends that they're getting offered a ridiculous amount per acre if they'll sell. They did lose a 3 year lease they had due to the landowners selling for mining purposes.
 
Well the weekend started out pretty good until one of the adjacent property owners (from out of state) stopped over to tell us they signed a one year option to sell their property (130 acres) for sand mining. It's not a sure thing - I would say probably less than 50-50, but it kinda puts my plans for this property on hold. Time will tell...

Are you thinking the noise and commotion will impact your property? I'm not up on frac sand mining either.
 
Are you thinking the noise and commotion will impact your property? I'm not up on frac sand mining either.

I'm not sure what frac sand mining operations are like....but i know what hydrofacturing, drill rig operations, well pad construction, pipeline construction, compression station construction, water storage and retention ponds construction look like, etc etc etc. I have an active well pad, and pipeline construction going on on my neighbor's property. At first i was concerned how it would impact deer movements....but if anything i saw an increase in deer usage of my property. I found my best set of sheds (pictured below) about 400 yds from the drill rig on my neighbors. I would say that the local people will have the longest lasting disturbance and annoyance at the increase in noise, traffic, dust, etc. the wildlife get used to it once they figure out it is non-threatening. The biggest impact i have seen on the deer is the increase in roadkill because of the increase of 24/7 gas industry traffic. WE have a ton of triaxles, water tankers, and big white "fleet" pick ups EVERYWHERE!
 
I live in the area and I'm conflicted on the Sand Mines.

I remember a saying from my Business Law class. "If you don't own the land you don't own the view". On the other hand people bought land in a agricultural area, not wanting to be next to industrial zoning.

Taylor Frac, Badger Mining, Preferred Sands (Blair), the new mine between Independence and Whitehall, the mine they want to put in by Arcadia (not sure if that has been approved) how many mines does one area need? On the other hand, the jobs and Property Taxes provided in the small towns are a positive.

In my mind it comes down to the location, if they have access to rail lines so they can easily move the sand out the location might makes sense. If they have to truck the sand out, it does not make sense. All of the mines I listed above with exception of Taylor Frac have rail access. Taylor Frac trucks about 4 miles to load to rail.

There was a mine proposed for South of Blair. They would have had to truck the sand out, every 3 minutes a dump truck would have been going through Blair...that was a bad place for a mine and it was denied.
 
I also forgot they wanted to build a mine right next to the Cochrane Fountain City School (K-12). That mine permit was also denied for good reason.
 
We have had nickel-copper-platinum exploration going on in our area that started around 2001 after some geologists did more research about a local formation during the 1990s. They had leases for exploration on close to 35,000 acres in the area but I think they are now focusing on a small area of a couple thousand acres. There were samples drilled near our farm but the main area they are focusing on is about 10 miles away.

These are the metals that are in sulfide deposits so there are a lot of environmental concerns. I have done some reading about it but not much. The deposits in our area are pretty far SW of the main mining area in NE MN where there are many people fighting it due to the BWCA and thousands of lakes and acres of forests in that area.

Kennecott mining now owns a few hundred acres in Aitkin county that they paid quite a bit of money for. Not sure what to think about the mining but I guess I am glad it is further away from us so we don't have to worry as much about the environmental issues.
 
The company I work for builds equipment for all of the above mentioned mining companies, both for frac sand and for other types of mining. Kennecott is HUGE, money is no object to them. We sent 12.5 million pounds of building steel to their open pit copper mine in Magna, Utah last year and they said it would be paid for within 18 months just by reprocessing the spoils from the copper mine and extracting molybdenum. They get about $250,000 per day in incidental gold from that mine also, and that isn't even what they are trying to extract. We have another project going on right now for the Fort Knox Gold Mine in Alaska. It is just nuts right now throughout the mining industry.
 
That is really too bad for you. This is very much a 'not in my back yard' scenario. Everyone wants cheap power and support jobs but no one wants to see an open pit next to their property and their land values plummet. If you don't sell now, you will never be able to get out at the current value. Frac sand mining is also highly unregulated in MN and WI. There is no standard for the particle size of silica that is produced from the sand mining, at least in MN.
 
Are you thinking the noise and commotion will impact your property? I'm not up on frac sand mining either.

There are a number of things that could impact my property - outside of selling the property - the number one impact would be the mining trucks crossing my property, since the only current access to the property under option is via an easement on the most southern part of my property. The other impacts depend upon how the plant will operate, the hours of operation, air issues associated with the silica sand dust, if there is a wash plant, then I have a potential well issue.
The option is priced at $10,000 per acre, which from what I have been told is low for frac sand property.
 
I'm not a lawyer but I would wonder if converting an easement from private use to commercial use may be considered an undue burden for you.
 
I'm not a lawyer but I would wonder if converting an easement from private use to commercial use may be considered an undue burden for you.

I would agree - Thanks for your thoughts!...;)
 
"DNR also doesn't require monitoring of something called fine particulate matter, or PM2.5 for short. That's a measurement for particles 2.5 micrometers and smaller - smaller than the width of human hair - that are common in industrial sites. PM2.5 can come from different kinds of substances - sand, carbon and diesel exhaust, you name it.

Dr. Crispin Pierce of the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire has been measuring PM2.5 levels at 15 Wisconsin frac sand sites over the last five years. As frac sand mining, processing and everything that comes with it, such as truck and train traffic, have increased, so too have the levels of fine particulate matter.

While the federal Environmental Protection Agency suggests that levels remain below 12, some sites had levels up to 50. The EPA and World Health Organization are both concerned about PM2.5 levels because they can easily get into lungs, potentially causing heart and respiratory problems. "The levels we're measuring around frac sand plants . . . are higher than backgrounds levels," Pierce tells Truthout. "We're concerned about the long-term health effects, cardiovascular risk, bronchitis and things like that."

DNR only requires companies to monitor emission of bigger particulates, not PM2.5. And Pierce says that only 10 percent of companies are actually required by the DNR to comply with these weak regulations.

The DNR's foot-dragging is the result of poor leadership and gutted laws. Cathy Stepp was appointed DNR Secretary in 2010, despite having previously called the agency "anti-development, anti-transportation, and pro-garter snakes" and having toured Wisconsin as a state senator as part of a legislative committee seeking out criticism of the DNR.

According to the agency website," Stepp notes her administration is concentrating on . . . simplifying permitting to accomplish Gov. Scott Walker's goals to create jobs in Wisconsin." For his part, in 2013, Walker signed a mining law, AB1/SB1, which significantly lessens environmental regulations, expedites mining permitting and diminishes DNR oversight. The law has allowed companies to receive mining permits they otherwise wouldn't have, had older, more stringent regulations been in effect."
 
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