How Rural America Got Fracked: The Environmental Nightmare You Know Nothing About
from TomDispatch:
How Rural America Got Fracked
The Environmental Nightmare You Know Nothing About
By Ellen Cantarow
If the world can be seen in a grain of sand, watch out. As Wisconsinites are learning, theres money (and misery) in sand -- and if youve got the right kind, an oil company may soon be at your doorstep.
March in Wisconsin used to mean snow on the ground, temperatures so cold that farmers worried about their cows freezing to death. But as I traveled around rural townships and villages in early March to interview people about frac-sand mining, a little-known cousin of hydraulic fracturing or fracking, daytime temperatures soared to nearly 80 degrees -- bizarre weather that seemed to be sending a meteorological message.
In this troubling spring, Wisconsins prairies and farmland fanned out to undulating hills that cradled the land and its people. Within their embrace, the rackety calls of geese echoed from ice-free ponds, bald eagles wheeled in the sky, and deer leaped in the brush. And for the first time in my life, I heard the thrilling warble of sandhill cranes.
Yet this peaceful rural landscape is swiftly becoming part of a vast assembly line in the corporate race for the last fossil fuels on the planet. The target: the sand in the land of the cranes. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175544/tomgram%3A_ellen_cantarow%2C_the_new_eco-devastation_in_rural_america/#more
Roy Ellefson
(279 posts)Great article and an issue that needs to be pushed. Hydraulic fracking IS an environmental disaster that deserves the attention it is receiving. However, frac sand mining is every bit an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The article does not adequately describe the horrific devastation these mines inflict on the landscape. To a casual observer and even some of the locals--frac sand mines are seen as nothing more than a gravel pit...that is, until you see one. Think mountaintop mining but with smaller hills.
Here's a link to the Save the Hills alliance.[link:http://wisair.wordpress.com/|
Roy Ellefson
(279 posts)This is one area that for now was saved from a frac sand mine. They wanted to mine right next to a state recreation area.
[link:|
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)Wisconsin should be protecting their precious rivers and lakes.
Shame on the federal and state governments who are allowing this. They will kill entire ecosystems in their quest for money and power, betraying the very people they are supposed to represent.
Water is our very basis of life. Once that is fouled.... nothing can survive.