New state frac sand mining standards will aid industry, local communities, officials say

Minnesota officials are set to approve new standards today to help regulate mining of silica sand.

Abundant in southeastern Minnesota, the sand is a crucial ingredient in the oil and natural gas extraction process known as fracking. The voluntary guidelines will help guide the emerging industry and protect their communities, local officials say. Critics argue the standards aren't tough enough.

The state's Environmental Quality Board created the standards after the 2013 Legislature ordered the agency to come up with guidelines for mining and transporting sand.

The 200-page document addresses a wide range of issues, including air quality, noise monitoring, storage, road and bridge impacts, and setbacks from homes. It's meant to be a guidebook that local leaders can use to regulate silica sand mining in their communities.

The guidelines offer help that goes beyond local expertise and creates consistency in regulations, said Jason Gilman, Winona County's environmental services director. "What we were starting to see is not a very consistent pattern across county boundaries of how people were going to deal with reclamation."

The county, he added, will rely on the state guidelines for technical guidance on water and air quality monitoring and will likely incorporate some of the new voluntary state guidelines into its permitting process.

Mining companies also hope local governments will abide by the voluntary rules. In the last few years, several cities and counties enacted moratoriums against frac sand mining and wrote ordinances to set limits on industrial-sized silica sand mines.

"I'm really hoping that the cities and the counties and everybody has a really good strong look at it and make sure that's what they use as their guidelines moving forward," said D'Arcy Duquette, president of Reservoir Silicates, a Canadian company that built a rail spur in Wabasha, Minn. He expects his company will begin hauling sand later this year from Wisconsin, over the Mississippi River to Wabasha and loading it onto 84-car trains.

The voluntary guidelines won't satisfy officials and environmentalists who'd hoped for a stronger regulatory grip on sand mining.

While the guidelines are a good starting point, Houston County Board Chair Teresa Walter said she would have preferred a stricter set of rules from the state. Houston County is considering permanently banning new frac sand mining and currently has a moratorium until March 2015.

"We had hoped that we'd have stronger guidelines," Walter said. "But we have recommendations, so we'll go from that."

The proposed state standards are weaker than many local rules and they don't include guidelines on how local governments could enact an outright ban, said Bobby King, a state policy organizer for the Land Stewardship Project.

"Some communities are going to decide frac sand mining doesn't work at all for their county, or their township, or their city," King said. "They'll want to prohibit it altogether. And that's a valid conclusion," he added. "That option needs to be included in this document and it's not."

The state guidelines are meant to support, not undermine, local rules, said Will Seuffert, director of the state environmental quality board.

"We're pretty clear that this is optional," Seuffert said. "Local units of government ultimately are the decision makers on these issues. And this is one of many resources to help them."

King said his group will continue to collect signatures to petition Gov. Mark Dayton for a two-year moratorium on all silica sand mining in southeast Minnesota.