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>> Tom Zinnen: Welcome,

everyone, to Wednesday Nite
at the Lab.

My name is Tom Zinnen.
I work here at the Biotechnology

Center at UW-Madison.
I also work for UW Extension

Cooperative Extension, and on
behalf of those organizations

and our sponsors,
Wisconsin Public Television,

Wisconsin Alumni Association,
the UW Madison Science Alliance

and the PLATO group, thanks
for coming to Wednesday Nite

at the Lab.
We do this every Wednesday

night, 50 times a year.
Tonight I'm delighted to be able

to introduce to you, Bruce Brown
who is a colleague of mine who

also works for the cooperative
extension.

He works for the Wisconsin
Geological and Natural History

Survey here in town.
He gets to work on one of the

more interesting and soon to be,
well, I think it's fair to say

it's rather controversial, the
whole issue of frac sands here

in Wisconsin.
So please join me in welcoming

Bruce Brown to Wednesday Nite at
the Lab.

[APPLAUSE]

>> Bruce Brown: Thank you very
much.

I'm quite pleased to see the
size of the crowd we've got

tonight.
Apparently this is an issue that

has caught a few people's
attention.

I was rather fearing for a while
that a talk about sand was about

the last thing anybody was going
to want to hear.

But if you have at least paid
any attention to the newspapers

or listened to any of the media,
you can't help but have heard

about various controversy about
hydrofracking and the production

of oil and natural gas and about
the fact that we've really

undergone something very much
akin to a gold rush in western

Wisconsin in this last year in
terms of companies coming in and

opening up mines to get the type
of sand that they need for

hydrofracking.
And I'm going to try to give you

an idea tonight a little bit
about why are they coming here.

Why is our resource particularly
better than elsewhere?

I'm going to start with the
basic process of frac sand, a

little bit about what the
characteristics of good material

are, why Wisconsin is a major
target, explain a bit about the

geology of the state that has
helped form this particular

material and then go into a few
of the issues that have come up

in local zoning and in the
counties coping with this huge

influx.
A lot of counties out in western

Wisconsin basically were, their
non-metallic mining regulation

program was basically five or
six big old hilltop limestone

quarries, and that's about all
they had to deal with.

A county like Trempealeau
suddenly has 20 applications for

hydrofrac sand mines, and this
has basically overwhelmed them

and needless to say it's kept me
pretty busy.

So I'm going to start out with
basically looking at what is

hydrofracking and how do you
hydrofrac a well.

Well, the principles of
hydrofracking are shown down

here in the lower left.
You have an oil well or a gas

well.
In the past, the basic

technology was to vertical
drill, and hydrofracking is not

something that's new.
This is a technology that's been

around since just post-World War
II, since the 1940s.

Basically, it was a vertical
drill hole, they would pump down

pressure, fracture the formation
a bit to help oil flow in.

It was a useful technique for
secondary recovery of oil and

worked very well.
Now the thing that is the new

development in the last few
years is horizontal drilling.

We've got technology today, all
of you have seen these little

rigs that they drill in cables
for putting in fiber optics or

whatever else, but they can
drill horizontally and follow

pretty closely on a straight
line.

Well, these oil drillers that
are currently developing the gas

fields and oil fields where
we're using most the hydrofrac

sand, they can drill out a mile
almost horizontally.

So that gives them a chance to
go right out through the

formation and then they frac the
formation by pumping down very

high pressure fluids, a mixture
of a number of things, water

being the major ingredient with
some polymers in there to help

keep the sand in suspension, but
all these trucks up here, if you

see in this upper photo, these
are all big compressor rigs from

oil field service companies, all
hooked in tandem to a well which

is somewhere here in the middle.
Most of these big trailers out

here that you see on the outside
are filled up with sand which is

the hydrofrac sand.
Have I got a mic that's not

working here?

All right, well that's a fair
trade.

[LAUGHTER]
To me it doesn't sound

much different.
But anyway, what we have

up here, a bunch of compressor
trucks.

These are all hooked in tandem
pumping a very high pressure in

this formation down here to the
point where it actually

fractures the rock around the
borehole.

It will break that rock up,
which is usually a very what we

call a tight shale.
Shale is a very fine grained

rock.
Most of our oil and gas in the

past was produced out of
sandstone which is very porous

and easy to extract the material
from, but the shale is very high

in hydrocarbon but it doesn't
have any interconnected porosity

so there's no way to get it out.
And they create that porosity by

the hydrofrac process.
As soon as they get that pumped

up, they start injecting the
sand and the fluids down there.

Basically what happens is sand
goes out, goes into these cracks

and when they back the pressure
off, shut down those

compressors, the sand stays out
there and holds those cracks

open.
You hear the term proppant used

every once and a while for
hydrofrac sand and that's

exactly what it means.
It props open those cracks.

Once they've let the pressure
off, the controversial issue is

you get a lot of fluid that
comes back out of here, there's

the big fluid ponds you can see
over here, that will take on a

lot of formation water and some
of the material that's pumped

down in before they can actually
produce the gas.

So what makes a good hydrofrac
sand?

Well, this is the kind of thing
that they're looking for.

These grains are almost
perfectly spherical.

Very round, well-rounded as we
say.

Almost entirely pure quartz.
Very few, some have a little bit

of iron staining on them but
generally this stuff is almost

perfectly clean, fine, even
sized.

There are some very tight
specifications in terms of size

gradation for different types of
applications, but basically what

they want is this good clean,
pure, very round quartz so it

won't hang up going out there
into the cracks and the other

thing is it has to have a very
high compressive strength

because when the pressure is
left off and those pores tend to

close up, they'll crush a grain
that isn't high compressive

strength.

So here is what an ideal frac
well would look like.

It has a surface up here, maybe
go down probably in this case

6,000 to 8,000 feet where
they're doing the fracking.

In many bases it's down to
15,000 feet or more.

Why?
That's one of the reason they

need the high compressive
strength.

The problems that have developed
with hydrofracking, we've heard

a lot of it in the news about
contamination of surface

aquifers, you see this little
insert here shows the well head,

and basically, key to the hole
thing, and you can imagine if

you're going to pump up a lot of
pressure in here, you've got to

have that well very well
constructed.

It's got to have a good casing
and it's got to be well cemented

in.
You can't have a problem.

You know what happens when you
have a poor cement job, you get

a blow out like the well in the
Gulf of Mexico last year, and

you can also get cases where
this stuff leaks up around the

casing and can contaminate some
water aquifers.

Chances are from the very deep
depths you're not going to be

fracking all the way up to where
you're going to actually

encounter that aquifer formation
near the surface, but the chance

of well failure is a lot
greater.

So it's a very important part of
the whole thing is to make sure

that these wells are constructed
properly.

So, where is the shale gas and
oil?

Well, here is a map that was
done by the Department of Energy

that basically shows you the
regions in the US where we've

had or have these tight shales
that are very rich in

hydrocarbon, usually natural gas
but also oil as well.

There's a big basin out here in
the Appalachians and this is the

area of the Marcellus shale and
Utica shale.

There's a few other small ones
in the east but the big ones are

like the Barnett down in Texas
and Barnett and Woodford out in

west Texas and into New Mexico.
The Bakken shale up in North

Dakota is a huge play, lots of
formerly unrecoverable

hydrocarbons up here and a
number of others out in the

Rocky Mountain basin.
These are the areas where most

of this material gets used.
To give you an idea just how big

this whole thing is, a colleague
of mine from the DNR who is

their point man on frac sand
sent this to me the other day,

and it's a satellite image.
It's kind of neat.

You can see the aurora up here
and everything.

Minneapolis, Minnesota, is over
here.

You can see the towns along the
highways.

This would be I94, Bismarck,
this would be Fargo, probably

Winnipeg up here.
You get this huge area of light

out here, light pollution
basically.

That's all the lights from the
oil and gas rigs in the Bakken

shale play.
I've saw this thing and I

thought this is absolutely
amazing.

Look at the size of that area.
But I've had a couple friends

that I know who have traveled
out there through North Dakota

this summer and they say it's
just crazy.

There's trucks all over the
place.

There's drill rigs.
It's a huge venture that's going

on right now.
Well, flip back out here at the

east, probably if you've watched
any place in the news and heard

about problems with
hydrofracking, it's out here in

what they call the Marcellus
shale which is in the western

part of Pennsylvania,
southwestern part of New York.

But I think you can see one
thing that's very obvious on

here is that in some areas like
in New York this stuff is

shallowing up to where the
actual, these are contours on

the base of the Marcellus are up
to around 3,000 feet.

When you're getting 3,000 feet
and less, then you're getting

into the realm where I think you
can possibly start getting some

problems from the actual
fracking material or from the

hydrofracking itself relieving
pressure by getting up into

formations that can be
potentially water bearing.

So this is the areas that
they've really had to take a

second look at it there's been a
lot of study and is a lot of

study going on with the
Department of Energy and EPA and

with the state geological
surveys out east to see what

they can do about getting this
better regulated because the

process, although it's a good
one and we've been using it for,

as I say, a lot of years, it may
not be exactly suitable

everywhere that we have the
shale conditions that you can

recover oil from.
It's not much of a problem when

you're out there in those big,
deep basins, but it may be some

problems in areas like the east.
Now here is another example.

This is from that Bakken shale
out in North Dakota.

And you can see this is
basically what happens.

They drill a whole series of
these horizontal borings in the

petroleum bearing or gas bearing
strata away from a single well

head, and then once they frac
these things, they're on about a

1300-foot spacing, and they frac
for a radius of about 500 feet

right around each bore hole
here.

And that's enough to increase
the porosity to get a whole lot

more recovered.
The thing about this is this

isn't to scale.
If you look over here, actually

you're looking at, this is
10,000 feet down below the

surface that they're doing the
fracking up there in North

Dakota.
But this is basically how it's

done and what the process is all
about.

So now let's get into the frac
sand and where does it come from

and why are we here in Wisconsin
looking for it.

Where is the best frac sand?
Well, I wonder if you can guess

what color I've used to show
that.

[LAUGHTER]
Basically, I took the

US geologic map, manipulated it
a bit with an arc map, put the

Cambrian sandstone, it's a very
mature, about 500-man-year-old

Cambrian age sandstone in red.
Good deal up here in Wisconsin,

western Wisconsin, and over here
into Minnesota, a little bit

down around the Ozarks and
there's some scattered areas out

in the Appalachians, but
basically a lot of these others

are not extensive or they're
quartzitic, they're a little

tightly cemented and you can't
really make good sand out of

them.
The best of the stuff is right

here from Minnesota River Valley
over through all of western

Wisconsin.
This is what's gotten their

interest.
So, again, the best stuff out

there is very pure quartz, very
highly rounded, good, in this

case, very, these are nice,
almost spherical grains.

This stuff is a little bit less
rounded, probably from a younger

aged sand.
Maybe a couple hundred man years

old Cretaceous age or something
like that.

Generally doesn't have the level
of maturity what we call, and it

also has possibly rack-rock
fragments in it.

Glacial sand, we've got lots of
in Wisconsin associated with

glacial deposits, is absolutely
unsuitable to use for frac sand

because it's full of all kinds
of stuff.

The grains are angular.
There's all kinds of rock

fragments.
There's all kinds of impurities

and materials in here that
wouldn't hold the crushing

strength.
It's not usable at all.

So basically the eastern half of
the state, the glacial deposits,

I get asked every once in a
while by counties over there,

are we going to have frac sand
companies coming in to look

around.
I say, nope, you're going to be

pretty safe.
But the western part, there

you're in trouble.
And this area of Minnesota is

less desirable than Wisconsin.
I had a call from one of my

colleagues at the Minnesota
Geological Survey not too long

ago, and he was asking what's
all the deal over there in

Wisconsin, we're not really
having all that much?

But there's two things: a couple
of our major formations over

here in Wisconsin, which I'll
talk about in a few minutes, are

buried a little too deeply over
in Minnesota, and also the main

formations like the St.
Peter and the Wonewoc are

covered by glacial deposits over
here west of the river.

The advantage that we have in
Wisconsin is that much of the

most desirable material is in
what we call the driftless area,

or the area that the glaciers
never actually covered.

So it's right there at the
surface.

It's very easy to mine.
You don't have to worry about a

lot of overburden.

So, here's the stratigraphic
column in Wisconsin, aged to the

different rocks.
We go from Precambrian rocks

down here at about three billion
years all the way up to

Devonian, our youngest rocks,
over in the Milwaukee area.

But our sands come from the
lower part of the section down

here basically.
Mostly in the Cambrian, there's

the Wonewoc sandstone, which is
a good, very pure quartz

sandstone and the Jordan
sandstone, and the Jordan

sandstone at the top of the
Cambrian, which is just under

the Prairie du Chien limestone.
And then we have the St.

Peter sandstone, which is
slightly younger and occurs

throughout much of southern
Wisconsin and southwestern

Wisconsin, but we're also seeing
a little bit of interest grow in

the Mt. Simon
sandstone, which is at the

very base of the section.
And this is also a very mature

sandstone.
Why are these such good, pure

sandstones?
Basically, there was a huge,

long period of weathering that
occurred on the continent after

the end of Precambrian time from
about a billion years ago to

around 500 million years when
the continent was flooded and

the Cambrian sands were
deposited.

And there was no vegetation
around at the time, very intense

weathering, this stuff got
kicked around, blown around,

washed around by streams.
Most of the unstable rock

fragments, unstable minerals all
were destroyed in the time and

you were left with nothing but
the most durable stuff which is

good, pure quartz and it was
nicely rounded.

So that's the stuff that got
incorporated into the Cambrian

sands, and that's the stuff that
we've even got a little bit of

it as late at the St. Peter.
But that's what the sand

industry is interested in.
So let's start up in the north,

and I'll show you a little bit
of what we're looking at.

This is in Barron County in
northwestern Wisconsin.

The Jordan sandstone is shown in
here in an orange color.

Up in this area and in the
northern part of Chippewa County

where we've had probably 10 or
15 different operations try to

locate in the last year, half a
dozen or more in Barron County,

they're interested in mining
this Jordan sandstone because

it's very coarse, it will meet
what's called the 20/40 size

gradation which is about the
coarsest of the frac sands, and

it's exposed right near the
surface.

Even though this area is
glaciated, there is a lot of

exposure near the surface, and
you don't have a cap over the

top of the Prairie du Chien
limestone which is shown over

here in the blue color.
So there's quite a bit of

interest in development up here.
One of the keys which I'll talk

about quite a bit during the
talk is transportation.

This is a rail line coming down
here.

I don't know that it's complete
all the way to Chippewa Falls

anymore.
They may have abandoned some of

it.
This section that has been

abandoned out here west of
Cameron and Barron, the DOT is

actually talking about funding
rebuilding that track out as far

as Almena just to serve about
three or four major sand mines

that are going in out in the
western part of Barron County.

So, let's take a look.
The geology in pre-boom

production sites in west central
Wisconsin looks something like

this.
This is a map that I worked on

back in the 1980s.
We had, up until a couple years

ago, only three or four
operations out there.

We had two old mines over here
along the river at Maiden Rock

and at Bay City in Pierce
County.

And these were mines that mined
the Jordan formation

underground.
They actually went in through a

tunnel driven into the side of
the bluff along the Mississippi

River and mined the material out
underground by what we called

room and pillar method.
And that way they could just get

the very desirable, very coarse
member of the Jordan.

Other areas we had up in the
north, Fairmount Minerals who

came in and bought out these two
old mines down here, started a

new plant a year or two ago, or
probably three or four years

now, up in Menomonie.
And they're in this other

formation shown in red which is
called the Wonewoc.

This is the Wonewoc formation in
red.

The Jordan that I pointed out is
in the gold color.

If you notice, there's not as
much area of Jordan.

That's because it's a steep
cliff former and forms long in

the bluffs or on the steep sides
of valleys and it's very

inaccessible except to go in
underground.

Whereas, a lot of surface
exposure of the Wonewoc and

that's the target a lot of the
companies are looking at.

Badger Mining Company, which has
been in business for Wisconsin

for years and years, has a large
mine over at Taylor in Jackson

County.
And this one has been there for

about 30 years, and it produces
a lot of frac sand plus foundry

sand and various other
industrial sand products.

But that was where we were
probably five years ago.

But this gives you an idea of
what the geology is out in the

area that they're basically
looking.

The Mt. Simon sandstone
is shown in the

light tan color, and we're
seeing a lot of interest in that

down in the area around Tomah
and Black River Falls where this

material has been very heavily
weathered and it's in part

alluvial material as well as a
bedrock material and it's being

exploited as a waste product
from cranberry bog development.

It's being bought up by the frac
sand miners.

But basically most of the new
mines that you hear about are

going in areas like Buffalo and
Trempealeau County are in this

Wonewoc.
Here's a little closer look at

it.
Badger in Taylor.

There's now a brand new mine
called Winn Bay Sands put in by

a Canadian company down here at
Blair in Trempealeau County.

The one good advantage that
these two operations have is

they're located on what was the
old Green Bay and western

railroad route which goes down
and connects with the northern

Santa Fe along the Mississippi.
So they do have rail shipping

access.
That's a very important thing as

far as moving a bulk commodity
like this.

What's Wonewoc sandstone look
like?

It's fairly impressive and
outcrops many places.

If you've driven down, this is
highway 14, junction with 35

right south of La Crosse.
That corner, this is all Wonewoc

in this section.
It's a very pure, if you go up

and pick out a handful of it or
break some of it as you can in

this road cut which is just to
the east on I90 over near west

Salem, you can just pick this
stuff up and break it up.

It's friable enough that you can
break it up with your hand, and

it looks like just little tiny
marbles if you look at it

through a hand lens.
But this is what the Wonewoc

looks like.
It's capped over on top by what

we call the a tunnel city
formation which is a very fine

grained what we call glauconitic
sandstone.

Has a lot of phosphatic material
in it.

This material actually is a very
good material if you don't have

too much of it to give you
problems.

It's overburden is very good to
use in your reclamation of a

mine that you're trying to take
out the Wonewoc.

One of the best examples of a
mine of the Wonewoc is the

Badger operation in Taylor
which, as I said, has been in

business for many years.
This is an old photo.

If you take a look at it today,
there's about twice as many

buildings in here.
One thing this operation has

done, it's been here for many,
many years, it's won many awards

for reclamation, they've done a
very good job of restoring the

site.
What they basically do in their

mining operation is they wash
this stuff down in a sump.

They basically will bulldoze it
or rip it because it's very

soft.
They don't have to blast much on

it.
Wash it down into a sump, pump

it up in a slurry to the top of
a tower like this where it goes

through a process of washing
through different screens and

sieves and then it's dewatered
in a series of a cyclone

dewaterers down at the bottom
and that's how they sort and

classify the sand.
The Jordan sandstone is another

important formation out in
western Wisconsin.

A little bit younger than the
Wonewoc.

This is the Jordan right below
the Prairie du Chien limestone.

This is in a cut south of the
town of Arcadia over in

Trempealeau County.
Jordan is a very good material,

has the coarsest sand in it,
highly desirable but you can

have generally a good cap of
limestone on top that, unless

that's been quarried away as it
has part way in this case, you

have a hard time getting at that
material unless you go in from

an underground.
And a lot of the sand companies

are very, very leery of dealing
with underground mining even

though we've had a couple
successful operations for 40

years over in Pierce County.
Problems you can get into in

there.
You can get cement.

This is a silica cemented area
within that.

That's just as hard as the
quartz site up at Baraboo.

And if you run into this kind of
material in a sand mine, this is

going to give you no end of
grief.

And I'm very surprised that a
lot of companies that I'm aware

of that have come in and started
looking and prospecting for sand

in western Wisconsin, you'll ask
them and they haven't done much

drilling, they haven't done much
evaluation work.

They've just gone in here, look
for unzoned town, basically,

where they don't have to go
through a lot of hassle, bought

up property and gone to the
county to get their reclamation

permit which is required under
law, and otherwise started out

and are digging sand and hauling
it down to Minnesota or wherever

they've got a rail connection
and mining it without really

thinking too much about that.
And I think we're going to have

some in for a surprise one of
these days.

This is the underground mine in
the Jordan over at Maiden Rock

in Pierce County.
The old mine at Bay City, which

was recently reopened, was
closed for a while and

abandoned, and what they did
basically was put in a culvert

pipe with grading on there, and
bats love to go in and hibernate

in these things.
And the bats are in here in the

active mine down at Maiden Rock
at the time.

They go back off into corners
that no one, where there's not

much operation.
It doesn't seem to bother them a

bit.
But basically the entire

operation is carried on
underground in here, in terms of

the wet sieving process
classification.

It's pumped out in a series of
pipes to the dry plant which is

a drying kiln located right out
here.

To add it back into the mine is
right back in here.

If you go down, especially to
this place again today, you'll

see there's all kind of
buildings around.

It's expanded considerably since
the boom started.

But it's dried in this area in a
kiln.

And there's a conveyor system
that takes it right under

highway 35 where they can load
directly on to the northern

Santa Fe.
So sand producing areas in

western counties, let's just
kind of sum this up.

We've got Bay City and Maiden
Rock, two old underground mines

over here.
One up in Menomonie.

Taylor and the Wonewoc down at
Jackson County.

We also have a big mine located
up near where the power plant is

just south of Portage.
It's owned by the Unimin

Corporation.
Portage and the Menomonie mines

both are in Wonewoc, and the
Wonewoc has a little more finer

material in it but it's also
very pure quartz.

So they've been able, in both of
these mines, to partner with

Cardinal Glass Company, which is
a major glass producer, has a

plant in Portage and also one up
in Menomonie, the material they

can't use for hydrofrac sand,
they can sell to the glass

company.
It's used as a basis for making

glass.

The other formation that's
starting to show a little bit of

interest is the Mt. Simon
sandstone.

And I'm a little bit surprised
at this.

This is the base of Mt.
Simon right here, resting on the

Precambrian, which is weathered
granite, up at Chippewa Falls.

Much of the lower part of Mt.
Simon is full the clay streaks,

it's got very pebbly material in
it, but basically is pure enough

quartz that they can sort this
stuff out by the sieving process

and whatever and concentrated
material that they can use for

sand.
And once you get farther beyond

the edge of the outcrop area of
the Wonewoc, sort of up into

central Wisconsin, this is the
formation that's available to

use.
And when you hear about

operations up in Wood County and
areas like that, northern Clark

County, they're in the
Mt. Simon.

Another type of operation that
we're seeing and started a

couple years ago, basically this
is a processing plant over in

the Tomah area, and you can see
these if you drive up highway 94

and you look north, about
Oakdale and that area, you'll

see these great big piles of
sand, big piles of white sand.

And a lot of this stuff is
actually from waste material

produced by cranberry growers.
As they're expanding their

cranberry bogs and they're
excavating out these big ponds

for water storage, they're
coming up with a lot of sand.

Well, a smart entrepreneur from
Texas came up here from a

company called Proppant
Specialists, and he decided I

could go in and buy this sand, I
wouldn't have to mine it so I

wouldn't have to worry about
getting any kind of permits to

mine, I wouldn't have to deal
with mine safety and MSHA, and I

wouldn't even have to get a NR
135 reclamation permit because

I'm just buying agricultural
waste here.

And so he set up a plant and
actually all the major producers

in the state at the time hated
him for it but it's a pretty

good business plan.
It's kind of clever.

They still are producing a lot
of sand out of this.

And this is in part alluvial
material and it's in part

bedrock material.
It would be Mt. Simon

bedrock in this area, but
if you look around some of the

high hills in there, like the
bluffs you see up at Camp

Douglas area and around there,
these are big bluffs of

Galesville or Wonewoc sandstone,
and they're sitting out there on

a plain of Mt. Simon,
and this stuff was all

reworked and weathered during
the glacial times when that area

was filled with Glacial Lake
Wisconsin.

And Glacial Lake Wisconsin on
the eastern side, the sands over

in, say, Portage, Adams County,
that area, are all full of

glacial material and not
suitable, but since this stuff

is all locally derived and is
right there and is already very

much disaggregated soft
material, it's a natural for

development.
And we've had probably about

five or six companies come in
looking at developing sand mines

and plants within using this
type of material in particularly

the area of Monroe County.
So let's take a look at the

St. Peter sandstone.
This is the youngest of the

bunch.
The St. Peter in our area

up here is a
little bit finer grain than it

is in areas like down in
Illinois.

It hasn't really received much
interest as far as being used

for frac sand.
The big production areas are

over here in Green Lake County.
There used to be several old

abandoned operations.
There's a big one, Badger's

Fairwater plant over here at a
place called Utley near

Fairwater on the border with
Fond du Lac County.

There's Gelhar Company has a
mine at Markesan.

There's a number of old
abandoned foundry sand

operations west of New Glarus
and down near Hanover in Rock

County.

Out here west of Madison and
Dane County, there was a large

foundry sand mine out there.
But a lot of St. Peter

is exposed down here in
the southern part of the state.

In general, the interest in St.
Peter has been, as I say, for a

foundry sand because it's not
coarse enough grain and it

doesn't have quite as much
compressive strength as the

Cambrian sands so it's not as
suitable for a frac sand, but

they're having, right now, a
shortage of foundry sands

because many of the producers in
other areas that could convert

over to producing frac sand
because the market has been so

hot in the last year have given
up on production of foundry

sand.
So we're really getting a lot of

demand for foundry sand over in
this part of the state.

A number of companies are
looking at expanding their

resources.
And you wonder, well, with a

down economy, why is there such
a big deal for foundry sand?

We're the manhole cover capitol
of the world here in Wisconsin.

You see all the Nina Foundry and
Brillion Iron Works out there on

every manhole and drain out
there in the streets.

But basically one of the company
people was telling me that

companies like Oshkosh Truck
that have gotten these big

multimillion dollar contracts
from the government to produce

armored vehicles and such for
the military are using a lot of

castings, and that's one of the
sources that there's a shortage

of actual good foundry sand on
the market right now.

So St. Peter,
this is what St. Peter

basically looks like.
Down in Iowa County you can see

these big bluffs in a lot of
places.

Down south of Madison it's
believed that it was actually a

dune sand.
Aeolian origin in some areas in

here.
You'll see these very big broad

cross beds.
Generally, the St. Peter

is a very soft material.
You can walk up to an outcrop,

pull it out.
It's frosted very, it looks like

sugar when you pick it up.
Very fine grained and very

rounded.
But it doesn't quite have the

characteristics for frac sand
that the old Cambrian sandstones

do.
One of our bigger operations of

the St. Peter
is up at the Badger

Fairwater plant.
Basically, there they're doing

entirely hydraulic mining.
They basically push sand or

disaggregated St. Peter
sandstone down into a sump

and suck it up the same way as
they do over at Taylor, pump

that up to a plant where it goes
through and is processed and

then put into stockpiles and
shipped for delivery primarily

to the foundry industry.
St. Peter

is a very difficult
formation to work, whereas over

in the west, the Jordan and the
Wonewoc are fairly uniform

thickness.
The St. Peter

can go, it was formed in
channels that were cut into the

underlying Prairie du Chien
limestone, and it can actually

vary from nothing here in this
quarry down at Markesan in

southern Green Lake County.
This is a Prairie du Chien

formation down here.
Platteville formation above.

That little rusty sort of line
horizon in there is St. Peter.

Five miles north of there this
is the AF Gelhar Sand plant and

mine just north of Markesan, and
he has over 200 feet of material

here that he's mining for
foundry sand.

Once you get down to the base of
the St. Peter,

it's pretty easy to tell
when you're running out of it

because you get into a very red
shale which is just reworked

material from that weathering
surface on the top of the

Prairie du Chien before the St.
Peter was actually deposited.

So, what are the prospects for
sand mining in south western

Wisconsin?
Right now I'm getting ready for

Friday.
I'm going down for a meeting

with the Lower Wisconsin
Riverway Commission is having a

meeting down in Spring Green in
which we're going to talk about

potential for sand development
down here in the lower Wisconsin

valley.
The Jordan is exposed in a lot

of the bluffs along these
valleys by Boscobel, areas stuff

as that.
St. Peter is shown in that dark

green color, potential is still
down there.

One good thing about it, they
have the service of that

Wisconsin central line that goes
west of Madison down to bridge

port along the river, and this
has been a key to getting people

thinking about development.
There's other issues down here

in terms of preserving the
riverway and various aesthetic

issues, and I'm not sure just
where this is going to go, but

there have been some serious
inquiries from some companies as

to what the resources are down
here and a number of landowners

have been approached.
Much of the area of south

western Wisconsin, which exposes
a lot of St. Peter

sandstone in many of the
valleys down here in the

Kickapoo and Platte Rivers and
various others, is not

accessible because the railroads
basically ended in, used to have

rails through much of that area
but it ends at Monroe at this

time.
I wouldn't doubt that there

would be some interest in
development, say, in Rock and

eastern Green County.
Taking a closer look at Iowa

County.
This is map recently completed.

There's Lone Rock, Spring Green.
The Jordan outcrop is shown.

Everything else has been shown
in the tan color here in the

rest of the formation.
The Jordan outcrop area is shown

in that red color which
indicates there's a lot of it

available up to down these
valleys.

And once you get on top, the St.
Peter is shown in the green.

So there's definitely potential
resource down there.

So let's look at some of the
issues that surround sand mining

today and just where we're going
with it.

Some of the advantages that you
can't ignore: local jobs and

economic growth.
There's probably an average of

20 people associated or more
with working in one of these

mines, 20-30 jobs.
Quite a lot of jobs in the

construction industry right now,
particularly up in Chippewa

Valley and areas like that and
constructing some of the bigger,

newer plants.
The demand for natural gas as a

clean fuel, I think, is going to
be around for a while.

The time it will take us to
phase out petroleum, even with

our best intentions, if we want
to get away from petroleum based

fuels, I don't care what you
say, we're not going to be able

to do it overnight, and there's
going to be an interest to

develop our own resources here.
So I think, number one, the

increasing use of natural gas as
a fuel for generation of

electricity to replace coal is
something that we've got not a

whole lot of choices, burn more
coal, build more nukes, whatever

else, but gas has proven to be a
good, clean fuel.

We're looking 5-10 years ago at
importing liquified petroleum

gas from the Middle East.
Today, with this technology and

some of those basins out in the
west, we have the potential of

actually being self-sufficient
in terms of our natural gas

supply.

Wisconsin has a
hundred-year-plus history of

industrial sand mining.
We've been mining sand, as I

say, for the foundry industry
probably since the mid-19th

century with very few
environmental or any other kind

of problems.
And when we compare sand mining

to other types of mining,
basically industrial sand mining

has a minimum environmental
impact.

Sand mines are among the easier
types of operations to reclaim.

If you've heard a little bit
about the iron mine proposed up

north, that would be a definite
contrast in terms of ease of

reclamation, but sand mining,
basically, are fairly easy to

reclaim back into agricultural
land or wild life habit,

whatever, and reclamation is now
required by law in Wisconsin.

There's no way that you can mine
without ultimately reclaiming.

Potential problems and issues
that are out there, and you hear

these raised a lot.
Groundwater usage and potential

for groundwater contamination.

You hear various concerns about
the amount of water that some of

these operations use to process
the sand.

As I'll say a little bit later,
they're very efficient in terms

of how they recycle the water.
Air quality is an issue that

there's been a lot of
information and a lot of

misinformation put out about.
Fugitive dust, risk from

breathing crystalline silica,
these are all real things to

consider, but I think in the end
we'll find they're very minor

when compared to other issues
involved.

A huge one, which nobody really
anticipated and has caused an

awful lot of concern,
particularly political concern

among the town associations,
county associations, various

local governments, is truck
traffic.

Up until this time, all of our
big operations, Badger,

operations over along the river,
the underground mines, the mines

up in the east in the St.
Peter have all been based on the

rail and rail transport.
Now we're looking at a lot of

operations in places like
Chippewa and Barron County where

they build a centralized plant
and are going to truck this

material in from a series of
different mines out here.

And there's a large plant by a
company called EOG that's just

been built on the north side of
Chippewa Falls, and they're

anticipating a truck a minute
hauling into that plant during

their producing season.
It's going through a roundabout,

one of my favorite traffic
control devices, on the north

side of Chippewa Falls at
highway 124 and S. And this is

going to be one a minute of
these trucks going in there and

empties coming back.
This is posing problems that

we've never had to deal with
before which is one thing that's

going to be a lot of concern.
Blasting and potential damage,

everybody's worried about that,
but there's very little blasting

involved in sand mining.
Noise levels, hours of

operation, these are things that
where you do have zoning are

dealt with in the conditional
use permit.

Reclamation and subsequent land
use, there's always some

disagreements about that but
there's no disagreement about

reclamation because reclamation
is a requirement by law in the

state of Wisconsin.
Any property before it can be

even opened and started is
required to have a reclamation

plan in place.
So how serious are the problems

and how do we deal with them?
Groundwater use, DNR regulates

high capacity wells very
closely, and high capacity wells

are wells that draw anything
more than 70 gallons a minute.

This includes most industrial
wells and irrigation wells, such

things as that.
Permits are required to get a

fairly extensive review.
I took part in a program up in

Barron County talking to their
board and Laura Lynch from the

DNR who does a lot of the
approval work gave a very good

summary of the procedures that
go through and evaluating the

effects on trout streams and
surface water and whatever else

in their municipal water
supplies, so there's quite a bit

of review that goes into the
water process.

When you look at it, I was
involved up in Dune County and

permitting the original mine
east of Menomonie and people

were looking out there and
saying if this thing goes in

there, they're going to dry up
everything we've got, they're

going to take all of our water.
And you can see out from the

window probably about eight big
center pivot irrigation wells

out there.
And I said every time a farmer

turns one of those on, he's
going to be using more water in

an hour than these guys are
going to use in probably a day

or more or closer to a week's
time.

But anyway, impact of private
wells, this is something that

always an issue, it's an issue
with aggregate mining, whatever

you're doing.
We've had very good success in

the aggregate industry with
companies and especially the

larger companies that come in
who'll agree to do a well survey

and basically guarantee the
water supply for their closer

neighbors.
If something goes wrong that

they cause their water supply to
dry up or they contaminate it or

whatever, they'll drill them a
new well.

This time of arrangement has
really worked very successfully.

We've had a number of cases over
in eastern Wisconsin with deep

limestone mines.
This has worked quite well.

And when you think about it when
a company comes in and is going

to invest millions of dollars in
a operation like this, it's a

very small amount to avoid
future problems with your

neighbors.
Water quality, where runoff and

surface water impact is
regulated by the DNR just like

it is for any other kind of
construction site or mining

operation.
Sand mining really doesn't have

much more potential for
groundwater impact than a

limestone quarry or a gravel
pit.

It's just maybe a larger scale
operation but in terms of any

kind of nasty materials that are
used or anything, not much

difference.
One issue that's of some concern

is the potential contamination
from flocculants that are used

in the settling ponds because
one of the things they do is

they recycle a lot of their
water and they have to settle

out the fines.
So they add flocculants, I think

it's polyacrylamides, and nobody
is really quite sure where this

stuff goes or what happens to
it.

There's no specific regulations
on it.

But there's never been any
problems on record with it, and

if you think about it, many of
those same chemicals, if you

drink Milwaukee's water, that's
the same thing they're using in

that to basically settle out the
sediment.

Air quality issues are something
that's really gotten to be a big

issue in western Wisconsin.
One thing about it, frac sand

requires clean, round, unbroken
grains.

Process involves disaggregation
and screening.

It's usually done wet rather
than any kind of grinding or

crushing operation because the
last thing you want to do is

break grains, make them angular,
then their not going to meet

your specks.
Frac sand plant will produce

probably less angular
crystalline silica dust than a

quarry that crushes quartzite,
say up at Baraboo or anywhere

like that, or a gravel pit for
that matter that dry crushes

fairly coarse cobble material
and does it without any

particular dust control
measures.

Most plants are just a matter of
a lot of the processing, as I

say in the initial screening, is
done wet in the first place.

There are standard ways to
minimize dust which is very

important, good industry
practices.

Such as watering them down haul
roads, paving roads, spraying

conveyor belts, even installing
wash baths for truck tires.

This is a very successful
technique that we've seen used

in a lot of limestone quarries
where tracking this dust

material out on to a highway or
something and then having

traffic kick it up has caused
all kind of problems.

They build a shallow pan, maybe
eight inches deep full of water

that the trucks drive through,
washes their wheels clean.

They have no problems with it.
But the DNR is very fussy in

their air quality standards
about controlling fugitive dust,

and complaints about these kinds
of things will generally result

in the DNR coming in there and
requiring some of these

techniques be used.
Most major operators do this as

a matter of routine.
For the actual workplace

conditions, Mine Safety
Administration and OSHA have

very strict workplace standards
and very tight restrictions on

how much particulate silica can
be in a cubic meter of air in

the work environment.
And if it's that clean at the

site, you're probably not going
to have a whole lot of problems

at distances, although there's
some probably necessary studies

to be done to collect some of
that data.

Operating issues, really
blasting, everybody is concerned

about it.
It's regulating by the

Department of Commerce.
If you've got a complaint,

that's where you go.
Blasting is used only to loosen

material.
I know of a number of companies

that have used it to break up
rock and loosen it a bit and

then they go in there and
basically drive a Cat back and

forth a few times and get the
stuff broken up enough that they

can get it into the wash plant.
But if it's too heavily cemented

to where you've got to use a lot
of powder to blast it, it's not

even going to make specks for
frac sand.

The traffic operating schedule,
road maintenance, these things

are best handle on conditional
use permit.

But the problem is that an awful
lot of places that mining

companies will come into just
because of the convenience have

no zoning.
I was talking about a town's

association earlier this year
and one of the executives there

was saying a lot of these towns
used to be very militant about

this idea of we don't want
zoning, we aren't going to have

anybody telling us what we're
going to do for our land use.

We're not going to have anybody
in here telling us we've got to

keep it all as prime
agriculture, whatever.

But then as soon as somebody
comes in and proposes a 500-acre

sand mine, they start to sing a
little bit different tune.

But anyway, there's generally an
opportunity to sit down,

particularly with many of the
bigger companies, and make some

negotiations.
Town of Howard up in Chippewa

County is very successful at
this and there's several others

since that have done that.
Reclamation.

People think that these outfits
can walk away afterward if

something goes wrong.
Reclamation is regulated under

NR 135 in the Department of
Natural Resources.

Reclamation plan is subject to
public comment and approval.

You've got to have a public
hearing associated with it.

It is required to be submitted
before you can ever turn a spade

of dirt at one of these
operations, and a company has to

post financial assurance in the
form of a bond that's an

irrevocable bond.
You can't say, well, some other

creditor will take that when
they go broke.

No, it has to be specifically
set aside for reclamation so

that the county or the local
government, whatever, is not

going to get stuck with the cost
of cleaning up a site.

That has to be in place before
any mining begins.

The good news is that we've had
a hundred-year history of sand

mining with very few problems.
Most environmental issues can be

dealt with under existing
regulations and by using

existing technology and applying
best industry standard

practices.
Many new mines now, this is the

one that, as I said earlier, is
really the problem that's

causing troubles out there, rely
on truck transport.

This means traffic and safety
issues, potential road

maintenance issues need to be
resolved.

We're seeing some real progress
among some of the western

counties.
There's even some that are

trying to make an assessment on
companies to help pay for the

road costs.
But the DOT is also very

concerned about this too because
it's putting a lot of extra wear

and loading on to state roads.
So there's quite a bit being

done about this right now to
work the issues out.

Operational issues can usually
be resolved by the zoning or by

negotiation.
And as new mines come into

production, I think the big
thing is that we've just seen a

huge rush in the last year
that's basically overwhelmed a

lot of the western counties and
they haven't be able to really

keep up with it, but as some of
these new mines come into

production, particularly some of
the large ones up in the

Chippewa County area, the demand
should be met and the pace of

development should slow down in
time to work out the remaining

issues.
One thing I might add at this

point is that Wisconsin is not
the only place that does have

sand that is suitable for frac
sand.

There is other sands of lesser
qualities, and a number of

companies are pouring a lot of
money into developing these

resources in areas like Texas
and Oklahoma, which are actually

closer in some cases,
transportation wise, to the

actual oil and gas fields.
The difference is that most of

those sands are down there
around 4,000 PSI or 6,000 PSI

crushing strength, and they
can't meet the standards that we

have which go up as high as
12,000 and 14,000 for some of

the best of the sands from the
Jordan formation in western

Wisconsin.
But there's going to be a big

shake out in the industry, I
predict, within the next year or

so because as this comes online,
we're going to see, right now

you could go buy a farm out in
Trempealeau County, Bubba's

Trucking and Excavating.
He's got a back hoe and two or

three dump trucks.
He can go out there, start

digging sand out of some
farmer's backyard, hauling it

down to Winona, Minnesota,
loading it on the Union Pacific

and selling it to a sand company
down there that has a loading

facility, and that stuff is
going down there and selling for

$300 or $400 a ton which at the
wellhead which is pretty

amazing.
Once they process it, they can

haul it down there, process it
down in Texas and sell it at the

wellhead.
Well, as soon as the supply

starts to come up, there's going
to be some major changes in the

economics.
We've got some huge capacity

being built into some of the big
plants like EOG up in Chippewa

Falls, Winn Bay Sands in
Trempealeau County, Badger has

put a lot in into expanding
their capacity, and I think

we're going to see a settling
out of the industry in the next

couple years.
So what can we expect?

The sandstone formations in
Wisconsin and Minnesota are the

best.
Well, that's a fact of life.

It just happened to be because
we've got the good stuff that's

available very easily and
mineable at the surface.

As long as fracking is the best
available technology, which

right now it is for producing
previously unrecoverable natural

gas, frac sand mining is going
to continue to be a big business

in our region.
There's going to be a demand for

it.
And I think that I'm not sure

what kind of technology will
ever replace it, but the fact

that it has brought us from
total dependence to almost

self-sufficiency on natural gas
and it's released a tremendous

amount more petroleum that we
won't be dependent on foreign

imports, I think there's going
to be a demand for it for a

while, at least into the future.
Interest in Wisconsin sands

growing but the boom took us by
surprise.

Counties were overwhelmed with
applications.

The scale is what really has
presented problems that we

haven't dealt with before, like
I mentioned early, the guy in

Trempealeau County had four or
five little stone quarries to

deal with, now he finds he's got
20 sand mines.

But he's actually doing a very
good job of dealing with it.

So conclusions that we can come
to out of this, I'm going to

wrap it up here.
Mother nature didn't give us any

of the oil and gas.
We don't have any energy,

basically, in Wisconsin.
We're strictly a consumer state.

But we did get the sand that's
now exactly what they want and

need to produce what they could
never produce before.

There's a few problems in the
process, but I think ultimately

that will get worked out.
It produces material very

efficiently.
You think about back when I took

petroleum geology, you used to
hear that we were only

recovering something like 20% of
the potential from a particular

oil field.
So we're really increasing our

efficiency and wasting less
fuel.

Frac sand mining should really
be continued as a strong a

stable industry as long as
there's a demand for

hydrocarbons and we wish to
reduce our dependence on

imports.
And I think that's a goal that

everybody has.
We would like to reduce our

dependence on hydrocarbons, but
I think it's going to take us a

number of years, realistically,
before we can really wean

ourselves completely away from
it.

But I think the current boom is
going to settle down as supply

catches up with demand.
And this is going to happen, it

may happen as a pretty big event
at the time because I think

we're going to see a lot of
these little guys who are

producing, small producers out
there, either being swallowed up

by the larger companies or
they're going to be put out of

business because you can't
afford the truck haul of hauling

this and paying for diesel fuel
to haul this stuff by truck when

you have some large companies
who had their own rail siding,

own their own cars and
locomotives, they can basically

spot a 60-car unit train on
there that the railroad just

comes and picks up and ships
out.

And that's the way you get your
best rates on shipping.

And any of this kind of stuff,
the one big factor in there is

transportation.
Efficient producers are going to

be some of the larger companies
that have been in the business a

long time.
We've got about three types of

companies.
We've got the old time sand

companies like Unimin, US
Silica, Badger Mining, Gelhar,

these people know what they're
doing.

They've been in the business a
long time.

We've got the carpetbaggers
who've come in who are, in many

cases, oil companies who've
tried to cut the middle man out,

and all they want to do is get
their own source of sand.

They may or may not stay in that
business, and then we've got all

the small guys out there who are
making a killing right now

because of the high price for
sand, but they're going to be

put out, I think, of business by
the lack of access to rail.

The survivors are going to be
the ones that can ship the

product efficiently, and that's
going to be one of the major

factors.
So with that, I will conclude.

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