Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources has decided to move forward with a strategic analysis of the state’s sand mining industry, which has seen nearly exponential growth in the past four years.

In October, Midwest Environmental Advocates, an environmental law organization, filed a petition for the DNR to look more in-depth into Wisconsin’s industrial sand mining sector. The Natural Resources Board voted unanimously in Madison Wednesday to conduct an analysis of the industry over the next year.

“That is really fast decision-making and the board has directed staff they need to finish it within a year, so that is really good,” Executive Director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, Kimberlee Wright, said.

Dave Siebert, director of the DNR’s Bureau of Environmental Analysis and Sustainability, said the first step of the analysis is a public scope of issues, which will start in February or March.

Siebert said at the end of the scoping process, the DNR will be announcing a timeline for people to expect.

“Depending on what the scope looks like, that will determine the timeline for us to go back to the natural resources board with a final report,” Siebert said.

Wright said Midwest Environemental Advocacy’s petition was a 29-page report outlining impacts the organization had identified as important by speaking with citizens.

She said the most important part of the process at this juncture was to make sure citizens were aware of this opportunity to express their thoughts to the DNR.

“One of the things we can all do is make sure the people who are most impacted understand that this process is going on, and that they have right to participate and just getting the word out so the people most in harm’s way have a chance to be heard,” Wright said.

Dan Masterpole, director of Land Conservation and Forest Management Department for Chippewa County, said this was the first time the DNR had made serious moves to investigate the industry.

Siebert said since 2010 there has been a very significant growth in the industry. Wright said although the quick action from the DNR after her center had filed the petition was admirable, action to look into frac sand mining could have come quicker.

“We’re so late in the game,” Wright said. “We have gone from, in about four years, maybe five of these facilities to, I think, 140 that are in production or plan on going into production.”

Wright said the actual mining sites are not the only environmental concerns her agency has regarding the industry.

She said processing and transportation of sillica sand in the state has also sounded alarms for environmentalists.

“It’s literally a landscape scale problem and so far there’s been no state study of the problem, no cumulative impact analysis,” Wright said.

The DNR reports more than 100 mining, processing and rail sites across the state, primarily western and northwestern Wisconsin, each of which provides employment in their respective communities.

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