Frac Sand Mines Are Preferentially Sited in Unzoned Rural Areas

PLOS ONE, Jul 2015

Shifting markets can cause unexpected, stochastic changes in rural landscapes that may take local communities by surprise. Preferential siting of new industrial facilities in poor areas or in areas with few regulatory restrictions can have implications for environmental sustainability, human health, and social justice. This study focuses on frac sand mining—the mining of high-quality silica sand used in hydraulic fracturing processes for gas and oil extraction. Frac sand mining gained prominence in the 2000s in the upper midwestern United States where nonmetallic mining is regulated primarily by local zoning. I asked whether frac sand mines were more commonly sited in rural townships without formal zoning regulations or planning processes than in those that undertook zoning and planning before the frac sand boom. I also asked if mine prevalence was correlated with socioeconomic differences across townships. After creating a probability surface to map areas most suitable for frac sand mine occurrence, I developed neutral landscape models from which to compare actual mine distributions in zoned and unzoned areas at three different spatial extents. Mines were significantly clustered in unzoned jurisdictions at the statewide level and in 7 of the 8 counties with at least three frac sand mines and some unzoned land. Subsequent regression analyses showed mine prevalence to be uncorrelated with land value, tax rate, or per capita income, but correlated with remoteness and zoning. The predicted mine count in unzoned townships was over two times higher than that in zoned townships. However, the county with the most mines by far was under a county zoning ordinance, perhaps indicating industry preferences for locations with clear, homogenous rules over patchwork regulation. Rural communities can use the case of frac sand mining as motivation to discuss and plan for sudden land-use predicaments, rather than wait to grapple with unfamiliar legal processes during a period of intense conflict.

Article PDF cannot be displayed. You can download it here:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131386&type=printable

Frac Sand Mines Are Preferentially Sited in Unzoned Rural Areas

RESEARCH ARTICLE Frac Sand Mines Are Preferentially Sited in Unzoned Rural Areas Christina Locke* Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America * a11111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Locke C (2015) Frac Sand Mines Are Preferentially Sited in Unzoned Rural Areas. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0131386. doi:10.1371/journal. pone.0131386 Editor: Yanguang Chen, Peking UIniversity, CHINA Received: November 21, 2014 Accepted: May 20, 2015 Published: July 2, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Christina Locke. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: A table of mine locations is included in the Supporting Information files. Other data for this study were compiled from third party sources, listed here and cited within the paper. Data for Fig 1: 1. USGS. 2012. Silica. Minerals Yearbooks 2002 - 2012. United States Geological Society. Available from http://minerals.er.usgs.gov/ minerals/pubs/commodity/silica/. Frac Sand Mine Locations: 2. WCIJ (2013) Wisconsin frac sand mines, October 2013 update. Available: https://www. google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid= 1gHYVpZPU4L2FabrrdvnUUym7q87HNW9739b XNfA#rows:id=1. 3. WCWRPC (2013) Frac sand mines, processing and transloading locations. Available: http://wcwrpc.org/Frac_Sand/frac_sand. Abstract Shifting markets can cause unexpected, stochastic changes in rural landscapes that may take local communities by surprise. Preferential siting of new industrial facilities in poor areas or in areas with few regulatory restrictions can have implications for environmental sustainability, human health, and social justice. This study focuses on frac sand mining— the mining of high-quality silica sand used in hydraulic fracturing processes for gas and oil extraction. Frac sand mining gained prominence in the 2000s in the upper midwestern United States where nonmetallic mining is regulated primarily by local zoning. I asked whether frac sand mines were more commonly sited in rural townships without formal zoning regulations or planning processes than in those that undertook zoning and planning before the frac sand boom. I also asked if mine prevalence was correlated with socioeconomic differences across townships. After creating a probability surface to map areas most suitable for frac sand mine occurrence, I developed neutral landscape models from which to compare actual mine distributions in zoned and unzoned areas at three different spatial extents. Mines were significantly clustered in unzoned jurisdictions at the statewide level and in 7 of the 8 counties with at least three frac sand mines and some unzoned land. Subsequent regression analyses showed mine prevalence to be uncorrelated with land value, tax rate, or per capita income, but correlated with remoteness and zoning. The predicted mine count in unzoned townships was over two times higher than that in zoned townships. However, the county with the most mines by far was under a county zoning ordinance, perhaps indicating industry preferences for locations with clear, homogenous rules over patchwork regulation. Rural communities can use the case of frac sand mining as motivation to discuss and plan for sudden land-use predicaments, rather than wait to grapple with unfamiliar legal processes during a period of intense conflict. Introduction The siting of locally undesirable land uses (LULUs) like mines, waste facilities, power plants, prisons and feedlots depends on the actions of both industry and local communities [1–3]. LULUs can present a dilemma for rural communities: the potential of increased revenues and PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0131386 July 2, 2015 1 / 21 Frac Sand Mines Are Preferentially Sited in Unzoned Rural Areas html. MaxEnt inputs to calculate probability: 4. WDNR (2011) Groundwater contamination susceptibility model data. Available: ftp://dnrftp01.wi.gov/geodata/. 5. U.S. Census (2013) TIGER/Line shapefiles. Available: https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/ data/tiger.html. Accessed 28 June 2014. 6. Fry J, Xian G, Jin S, Dewitz J, Homer C, et al. (2011) Completion of the 2006 National Land Cover Database for the conterminous United States. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing 77: 858–864. Data available: http://www.mrlc.gov/ finddata.php. Additional data used in regression models: 7. U.S. Census (2001) Census 2000 Summary File 1. Available: http://www.census.gov/ main/www/cen2000.html. 8. WDOR (2010) 2009 Town, village, and city taxes. Available: www.revenue. wi.gov/pubs/slf/tvc09.pdf. 9. WDOA 2011 (2011) 2011 Wisconsin local land use regulations and comprehensive planning status report. Available: http://www.doa.state.wi.us/Divisions/ Intergovermental-Relations/Comprehensive-Planning/ 2011-Land-Use-Regs-and-Planning-Status-InventoryReport. Funding: This project was supported by the Forest and Wildlife Ecology Department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (www.wisc.edu), and the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2012-67011-19876 from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (www.usda.gov). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist. job growth on the one hand [3,4] and increased danger, ill health or lowered property values on the other [2,5]. In many parts of North America and Europe, it is the prerogative of local governments to regulate—or to not regulate—industrial and other land uses through zoning [6]. Many rural communities manage land-use conflicts informally, among neighbors and on an ad-hoc basis, and may be unfamiliar with formal planning and zoning processes [7]. Gradual changes like housing development, a growing commuter population, and other signs of suburbanization often prompt growing communities to adopt comprehensive land-use plans and zoning ordinances as reactive measures [7,8]. However, new and drastic changes may arise even in rural areas that show few signs of suburbanization and are outside of commuting distance to major urban centers. In these cases governments may need to navigate unfamiliar legal processes during a period of perceived crisis, such as a boom of extractive industrial operations. Informal agreements may be insufficient means for controlling development when facing new or stochastic market forces, even in slow- or no-growth rural areas. This study focuses on a specific type of LULU, the mining of silica sand for use in the hydraulic fracturing industry (“frac sand mining”). The research objectives in this study are first to describe and analyze the spatial pattern of frac sand mines, and secondly to explo (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131386&type=printable
Article home page: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0131386

Christina Locke. Frac Sand Mines Are Preferentially Sited in Unzoned Rural Areas, PLOS ONE, 2015, 7, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131386