Gold In The Wisconsin Hills

Morning Edition:

LAURIE STERN, BYLINE: There's a unique geography here in the western Wisconsin counties bordering the Mississippi River: steep bluffs with layers and layers of silica sand. The sand is now extremely valuable because it's strong enough to prop open the underground veins in shale fields so that oil and natural gas can be released. It's called frac sand, and Wisconsin appears to have more of it than any other state. Now the sand rush is on. These hills are private property, so sand mining companies have to negotiate with local farmers.
Farmers like Dennis Bork, a rugged man in his early 50s.
DENNIS BORK: Just roll it between your fingers. It just feels like salt grains. Once that gets washed out that's all that's left is just those granules, those round and hard, and you can kind of see 'em there on my finger.
STERN: Wisconsin fill sand sells for about $6 a ton. This sand is worth much, much more about 30 times more - close to $200 a ton.

The economics of fracking don't make much sense to me.  $200 a ton for sand from Wisconsin to ship all over the country.  $2500 to $5000 an acre for mineral rights in southeast Ohio.  $19 an hour to have truck drivers haul millions of gallons of water to the well sites.  $10 million a well.  Then the wells deplete extremely fast and you have to do it all over again. 

But the thing that caught me off guard in this story was this detail:

Local landowners wear bright green T-shirts that say Glacier Sands on the front and sand = jobs on the back. The three guys from the county who will vote on the permit have questions for Tom Hubbard, a local engineer whose company would build the sand mine.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: You're talking about taking these hills down about half as high as they are right now then?
TOM HUBBARD: Probably somewhere around in there I'd say, yeah.
STERN: Taking the hills down works for farmers like Dennis Bork. Back on his farm, he'll be able to grow corn where he can't now. Glacier Sands is promising to reclaim his hills.
BORK: My hills are going to be easier to farm when this is done with because they're going to be more of a level terrain that what they are now.

I can't imagine that the companies will strip the topsoil, mine the sand, regrade it, and make it very productive farmland anytime soon.  It probably is easier in sandy soils, but around here, you're going to end up with a bunch of clay mixed in with the topsoil and have a mess on your hands.  I would agree with this neighbor:

 STERN: If Glacier Sands gets its permits, hundreds of sand trucks a day would pass right by Rosenow's house. Sand pits would surround her property. She doesn't believe the bluffs can be rebuilt. Rosenow is part of an increasingly vocal opposition that plans to fight the mines here every step of the way.

According to the article, tens of thousands of acres have been put under contract for mining.  I would probably wipe out those acres as productive farmland.  I wouldn't be surprised if many of these farmers are disappointed down the road, even with their newfound wealth.