Marcie Ratliff/Winonan

At the Frozen River Film Fest, after dashing to the Science Laboratory Center to see “Numb” only to find that the auditorium was full, my roommate and I went to see “The Price of Sand” in Somsen.

Right away, we seemed to be the youngest in the auditorium and the only ones who didn’t know what was going on.

I have no excuse for ignorance. Frac sand mining has become a familiar term to me as a news editor, but (as is the case with so many words in my brain) the definition is less familiar.

Frac sand mining, simply put, is the process of stripping topsoil from sandstone hills and extracting the silica sand within them. The sand is then washed and shipped for use in oil wells.

Frac sand mining could mean a Winona minus a bluff. Wouldn’t we notice a gaping hole like a lost tooth, carved into the landscape forever?

But let’s backtrack a bit. I consider myself a (realistic) environmentalist, and I’m always skeptical about appeal-to-pathos environmentalists who accuse me of being alive. I’m sorry, everybody, but I have a huge carbon footprint.

I generate heat, thus hastening the heat death of the universe.

When I ride my bike to and from work, I make myself hungrier, thus consuming more of the world’s limited food resources. I also run long distances just for fun, and then I eat half the refrigerator.

I use paper to write things.

I flush the toilet, and I wash my dishes, using up the world’s limited water supply.

I have a computer chock-full of toxic components that can’t really be re-used. I go to college at a school that is 180 miles from home, thus creating tons of pollution every time I go to school.

I don’t have a car, but I use other people’s cars, buses, trains, planes, you name it, whatever, and all that fossil fuel I’m burning is going straight to the hole in the ozone layer.

I eat bananas grown in Costa Rica, and oranges from California, and good grief, I even use goods made in Lesotho, China, Pakistan… the list goes on.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am responsible for the environmental death of the universe. Come and get me.

But seriously. Isn’t it a little hypocritical to drive a car that uses gasoline and then go after the companies that make it possible for you to have that gasoline without getting it from the United Arab Emirates? Companies that make domestically-produced fossil fuel possible?

Unless you live as a Luddite and never burn anything for heat, not even wood, you don’t get to talk.

Or so I thought.

But “The Price of Sand” corrected my thinking. There I was in Somsen Auditorium, surrounded by mildly angry people who seemed intelligent. So I listened up.

It’s not that we don’t use fossil fuel, or that environmental activists are always off-the-grid live-in-the-woods types. It more has to do, in the frac sand mining world, with method.

I have come to the conclusion that the method of extraction currently employed by frac sand mining companies is a disaster.

“The Price of Sand” (and many other sources of information that argue against frac sand mining) makes the claim that mine size and proximity to neighborhoods lead to health concerns for entire communities.

Many mines in southwestern Wisconsin comprise hundreds of acres and operate around the clock. Noise, dust, light pollution, truck traffic, and downright ugliness have become the new front-yard view for some families.

Again, isn’t this a natural externality of progress? Aren’t we all polluting each other anyway? Perhaps.

But again, frac sand mines are not merely nuisances. Throughout the documentary, witness after witness mentioned a lack of accountability and respect between oil-or-sand-company CEOs and your average middle-class citizen.

CEOs and presidents, rather than being actively engaged in making a community better through business, are unavailable for comment.

In some cases, citizens were paid handsomely to speak for the mining companies, or paid extra for their land if they didn’t say who bought it.

I think most of us would agree that such methods are a little sneaky.

At the end of the day two things are clear to me: in our country as it now, we need oil to go about our lives. We also need safe communities where our kids, ten years down the road, can grow up.

And perhaps by then, fossil fuels will be a garnish for a renewable-energy lifestyle.

For the time being, sand fracking is a viable option for oil extraction. But frac sand mining companies need to be willing to make compromises with locals that would include smaller mine sizes and better transparency.

Maybe transparency is too much to ask for. Translucency would be a good start.

Contact Marcie  at [email protected]