What will the sand mining industry look like in Wisconsin in 30 years? Some of the small sites will be completely mined and reclaimed in a few years, according to permit applications, while most of the larger facilities with processing plants estimate they have 15 to 25 years of sand reserves.
The demand for Wisconsin’s sand directly follows the demand for oil and natural gas, according to Thomas Dolley, a mineral commodity specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
“I’ve heard rumors that things are flattening out a bit, but I don’t think it (hydraulic fracturing) is going away anytime soon,” Dolley said.
In Wisconsin, many industry experts believe that the state is nearing the peak of new mine development and that established, corporate mining companies will soon out-compete the smaller operations.
“The small companies will quickly discover that it’s not profitable to truck sand across to Minnesota for processing and then back somewhere else to ship and sell if the price drops even a little bit,” said Bruce Brown, who recently retired as senior geologist with the Wisconsin Geological Survey.
“The little guys will sell out or give up. It’s got to settle out one of these days, because we’re going to satisfy the demand pretty quick.”
— Kate Prengaman
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Credit should be given, in this format: “By Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin Watch”
- If published online, you must include the links and link to wisconsinwatch.org
- If you share the story on social media, please mention @wisconsinwatch (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram)
- Don’t sell the story — it may not be marketed as an individual product.
- Don’t sell ads against the story. But you can publish it with pre-sold ads.
- Your website must include a prominent way to contact you.
- Additional elements that are packaged with our story must be labeled.
- Users can republish our photos, illustrations, graphics and multimedia elements ONLY with stories with which they originally appeared. You may not separate multimedia elements for standalone use.
- If we send you a request to change or remove Wisconsin Watch content from your site, you must agree to do so immediately.
For questions regarding republishing rules please contact Andy Hall, executive director, at ahall@wisconsinwatch.org