Minnesota must keep a close eye on sand mining – (Minneapolis Star Tribune – June 22, 2013)

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Even in a legislative session marked by pitched battles over taxes, the health care exchange and child care unionization, the debate over how to regulate an industry poised for rapid growth in southeastern Minnesota — frac sand mining — stood out in emotion and intensity.

In packed Capitol hearing rooms, citizens and local government officials from this environmentally fragile part of the state pleaded for a mining moratorium and broad state regulatory authority to protect scenic bluffs, cold-water trout streams and picturesque towns. Industry advocates championed mining’s economic development potential as demand grows for the region’s desirable sand — a key ingredient in hydraulic fracturing, a process used to unlock deposits of oil and natural gas.

Over the course of the session, sweeping environmental protections such as a moratorium or a sensible ban on mining within a mile of region’s trout streams fell by the wayside, a testament to industry lobbying strength.

But a deal brokered late in the session with Gov. Mark Dayton’s leadership yielded smaller, yet potentially valuable new safeguards. Among them: a new permitting role for the state Department of Natural Resources for mining operations proposed near sensitive trout streams, the creation of air quality rules for particulate emissions by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and development of “model ordinances” to help local government, which still shoulders much of the responsibility in the state for approving sand mines, to better regulate the industry.

The acreage threshold for a mine’s size that triggers an environmental review has also been lowered.

While it’s too soon to tell how effective these safeguards will be, their existence offers reason to be hopeful that Minnesota will not repeat the mistakes of mine-first, regulate-later Wisconsin, where the industry has leveled bluffs, has built vast processing facilities and has sent heavy truck traffic through small communities with too few questions asked.

“It’s not nearly what a number of us would have liked, but it’s a start,’’ said Lynn Schoen, a Wabasha, Minn., City Council member who has long raised concerns about local government’s ability to push back against the well-funded industry. “If everybody is given the tools and the freedom to enforce what has been set down, it may be somewhat helpful.’’

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