De Witt County Texas

Sand mining surges in Wisconsin

Frac sand: Wisconsin mines and plants Click to view a spreadsheet of the 41 mines or processing plants Center reporters found.

Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is used in 90 percent of natural gas wells in the United States. Gas companies drill down and across layers of rock and then pump a pressurized mixture of sand, water and chemicals deep into the earth, creating artificial rock fractures. Read more in a new page

TUNNEL CITY — Retiree Letha Webster’s voice briefly cracks when she talks about leaving the town she and her husband have called home for 56 years. But she says selling her land to an out-of-state mining company was the best move she could have made.

The 84-year old was approached in late June by a Connecticut-based company, Unimin, that planned to build a sand mine in the area and was paying a good price for houses in the way.

Webster’s struggle to maintain her home and 8.5 acres of land while caring for her husband, Gene, who has Alzheimer’s, meant she would need to move soon anyway. Webster, whose property was valued last year at $147,400, says she has agreed to sell for more than double that amount: $330,000.

Others in the area are selling, too. In addition to Webster, there have been at least seven major transfers of land from residents of this unincorporated community in Monroe County to Unimin’s Eagle Land Investments since late May, according to state Department of Revenue records.

The 436 acres have a market value of just under $1.1 million. Unimin paid a combined $5.3 million to the property owners in Tunnel City, a community 45 miles northeast of La Crosse named for a nearby railroad tunnel.

This western Wisconsin community is in the midst of a land rush — call it a sand rush — fueled by exploding nationwide demand for fine silica sand used in hydraulic fracturing. In this process, nicknamed “fracking,” sand, water and chemicals are blasted into wells, creating fissures in the rock and freeing hard-to-reach pockets of oil and natural gas.

At least 16 frac-sand mines and processing facilities are operating, and an additional 25 sites are proposed, in a diagonal swath stretching across 15 Wisconsin counties from Burnett to Columbia, the Center has found. Chippewa County has seen the most action, as Wisconsin Public Radio’s Rich Kremer reported in June.

Most of the mining operations have sprung up over the past three years, stirring concerns about the effects on land and groundwater and health impacts on nearby residents. Of particular concern is crystalline silica, a dusty substance known to cause health problems including cancer and silicosis, a potentially fatal lung disease.

A Texas Badge In Question: DeWitt County Chief Deputy Sheriff ...

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Dewitt County, Texas, The Bloody Years

Dewitt County, Texas, National Register of Historic Places Listings in Dewitt County, Texas

Batts' annotated revised civil statutes of Texas, 1895, the revised civil statutes of the state of Texas : adopted at the regular session of the twenty-fourth Legislature, with complete index and corrected marginal notes; and with additional notes sketching the history of Texas legislation, calling attention to errors and omissions, giving excerpts from the constitutions, bearing upon the several titles, and digesting all decisions of the Appellate courts of Texas, and of the courts of the United States construing Texas statutes : notes

Dewitt County, Texas, records of wells, drillers' logs, and water analyses, and map showing location of wells

Journal of the House of Representatives of the ... session of the ... Legislature of Texas