Amish Fight Back Against Frac Sand

Controversy brews in Winona as the local Amish community objects to plans to construct a new frac sand rail yard.

The 300-acre facility, run by Minnesota company Farm2Rail, is being planned to handle the washing and loading of the fine silica sand used in fracking. The fracking process works by injecting a mixture of frac sand, water, and a fracking fluid (a mixture of hundreds of different chemicals, many of which are proprietary) into the earth, breaking up the rock and releasing pockets of natural gas for extraction. The process has drawn criticism for its environmental effects, including air pollution,  water contamination by leaking containment ponds, and the triggering of earthquakes by waste water disposal wells. The fracking industry itself has drawn scrutiny for the so-called Halliburton Loophole, an exemption from key protections in the Safe Drinking Water Act passed under the Bush administration.

 'Mount frac' in the nearby city of Winona

Just ten miles away from where the immense new facility is to be built, sits a farming community of some 60 Amish families, a countryside the Winona Daily News describes as 'a place of horse drawn buggies and one-room school houses'. It is one of Minnesota's 13 Amish communities, an interdependent network clustered in Winona and Fillmore Counties- counties that are now becoming home to a 'sand rush' to feed the growing natural gas industry. The yard will service sand coming from the new mining operations that have sprung up across northwestern Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota, turning the region- home of environmental philosopher Aldo Leopold's Sand County- into a new leading source of frac material, bringing new jobs in a tough economy. 

Those in neighboring communities, however, have reasons to be uneasy about their new industrial neighbors. The sand is known to cause respiratory illness such as silicosis.  In addition, the cleaning process the sand will go through at the facility is highly water-intensive, raising concerns about the ongoing issue of water scarcity. 

Amish scholar Lee Zook, a retired sociology professor from Luther College notes that the heavy traffic from the facility can disrupt communities that are dependent on one another, and contends that the facility "is going to be extremely disruptive in terms not only transportation, but also just noise levels". Local farmer Daniel Gingrich says that the biggest issue is safety- "They're talking a minimum of 400 to 800 trucks a day. Every minute or so, there'd be a truck going, and we have our school children on the road". The Amish are joined in their opposition by a group of residents who would share Cherokee Road with the facility if it were built, citing declining property values, traffic, and environmental risks.

Gingrich reports that not only has the company made plans to build the facility, but they have contacted the farmers with offers to buy rights to their lands, bringing the mining into the community itself.

As of June 27th, the St Charles Township Board of Supervisors voted against transferring the 300 acres of land for the facility to the city of St Charles. The project may continue if the city finds another way to procure the land, or if Farm2Rail receives a permit from the county. Until that decision is made, the future of the rail yard- and of St. Charles' Amish community- remains in limbo.


Image source: Minnesota Public Radio

Having a large industrial installment next to this kind of typical, idyllic, kind of farming community, is going to be extremely disruptive in terms of not only transportation, but also just noise levels.

Source: Desmogblog (http://s.tt/1htDx)