Pore old Haven2. ‘lil old blog’s being neglected. I was going to blog about frac sand mining here but the issue kinda exploded into such a big deal that it needed a URL all its own and I forgot to cross-post a link to the new site back here at the ranch.
So here’s a link for those of you that follow me on this blog. Sorry about that. Things got a little crazy there for a while and I’m just now circling back to do the housekeeping.
this is a teaser from the front page over there…
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″²s or even 1000″²s 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.