Closed Captn ITO1503, Page 1
Closed Caption Script for
Decoding the Impacts of…Industrial Sand Mining
ITO 1503 – UNIMIN Tunnel City
Loon calling…
VO - The following organizations have provided funding for this Into the Outdoors television series.
Jacobat sand mine location– There it is.
Emma–Yeah, I see it.
Jacob – Oh my gosh.
Emma – Okay, you’re going to need to wear this today. Same reason you’re wearing those steel toed things. Because we’re headed into that place – an industrial sand mine… to decode the science and impacts of what really goes on there.
Jacob - And because we need real answers. Look, there are two kinds of scientists; pseudo scientists who get an idea in their head then look for a little information to support it. Duah! Then there are the real scientists. The ones who investigate the science first and investigate the facts. Which one do you want to be?
Emma – Real of course! That’s why we’ll be recording and asking questions about the stuff that really matters – you know, what’s the impact on our environment?
Cedricin mission control - Yep, got signal feeds coming in now. Whoa, that right there is not your schoolyard sandbox. Good luck, guys. We need investigative answers… as we head, Into the Outdoors.
Into the Outdoors theme song…
IN - TO - THE OUT - DOORS
Grab your gear and - let’s explore As we discover - the wild outdoors
science - discovery - is what we – do-o-o-o-o-o!
Into the outdoors, now what you waitin for
Into the outdoors, it’s fun when we explore
Science, discovery, It’s way too, co-o-o-o-ol!
You can make our eartha bright and better place
by joining us in this wide open space
Into The Outdo-ors!
Cedric in mission control – Here’s the plan. You guys are going to go on your tour while I dig deeper into this industrial sand thing. You know, it kind of looks like they’re mining something precious down there. Hmm, it’s just sand, right? Let’s see what they use it for.
Uses for industrial sand… Silica, SiO2. Hey, that’s quartz! The most common silica crystal and the second most common mineral on the earth. But why would that be so valuable?
Okay, uses coming online… whoa, chill on the feeds. Oh, they want clean quartz sand, almost 95% silica. No wonder, they make all kinds of glass with it; from car windshields to light bulbs to glass jars to test tubes. Guess that’s legit.
And they use it in making Metal Castings from car engine blocks to sinks and faucets. They even use it in making the metal alloys that they pour into sand molds. Didn’t figure that.
Chemical Production? Hold on, it’s sand. Oh, yeah, silica-based chemicals for making stuff from cleaning products to fiber optics.
Huh?Construction materials that build our homes and cities, the roadways connecting them. Sealants, Caulks, Paints, Coatings, Ceramic products, Toilets, Tableware, Floor and Wall Tile, Drinking Water Filtration, Golf Courses, Athletic Fields, and… gasp… Oil and Gas Recovery, you know… Frac sand.
Emmaat said mine – Are you getting all this back at Mission Control?
Cedric – Got signal feeds coming in now.
Emma - But now I’m wondering if we’d be getting any of it without silica sand. No cell phones, no cameras, no truck, might have to rethink some of this.
Jacob – Okay, we get the picture. We’d be living in huts eating bugs without that sand. Who would have thought? So yeah, we admit need it. It’s important. It’s valuable. So sure, they have to mine it somewhere. But why here? Beaches and deserts have tons of sand.
Emma –That’s what the scientists are for.
Jamie(scientist) – The sand deposit here is dominated by very pure quartz sandstone. The abundance of the round sand grains is what makes it so unique.
Emma – It may look like stuff you’d see in a sandbox, but Jamie explained why it’s so rare.
Well first, because of the silicon-oxygen atoms that make up pure silica quartz, it’s one of nature’s hardest minerals. And after a billion years of being churned in an ancient sea, all the impurities got washed away while the sand grains became rounded and sorted into these uniform spheres.
This rare silica sand layer was deposited in an ancient sea 500 million years ago that used to be right here, in parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. And because this particular sandstone is only exposed at the surface in some places, it makes sites like Tunnel City, very important.
It’s hard to believe that nature can make something that cool and perfect.
Jamie – You guys know what I’m talking about when I say impurities?
Jacob – No
Jamie – See the different colors in there? The blacks and the oranges and the yellows? They’re just different types of minerals. That’s what we consider impurities. The silica is the very, very clear round grains that you can tell.
Jacob – Okay
Jamie – We take off the first 80 feet roughly and set it aside for later reclamation. After that, we mine the next 60 feet. Of that 60 feet only about half of it meets our specifications.
Phone rings
Emma – Oh sorry, mission control is calling. We gotta go. Sorry.
Emma with sand in shoes – Argh, another hazard of being a sand miner.
Jacob – Naw, just another day at the prehistoric beach.
Cedric – Coming up next, do you think they use dynamite to blow up the rocks to get the sand? Let’s see! (Explosion!)
Vo – Don’t go away. There’s more Into the Outdoors
Billboard 1
Commerical #1 – 60 seconds
Reminder – There’s still more, Into the Outdoors
Commerical #2– 30 seconds
We’re back – And now back, Into the Outdoors
Emma – Alright, so somebody needs to mine this industrial sand. And they need to mine it here. But exactly how do they mine it?
Jacob – Yeah, but also how they impact the environment when they mine it.
Emma - Well, that depends on how they mine it, doesn’t it?
Jacob – I suppose so, but… oh forget it. You ask your questions and I’ll ask mine.
Mark (mine engineer) – This is where it all begins. The first step we do in mining is we have to remove the trees and topsoil. The trees are either hauled off the lumber mill or turned into mulch. The topsoil is placed in a pile where we use that later in our reclamation. From there we remove the dirt and rocks that’s on top of the sandstone. We call that overburden.
We come in with scrapers and dozers and we break up that material and we haul it off. Then we go after the sandstone which is a 60 foot seam. From there we use bulldozers to push the sand into piles.
Emma- Time out! I thought this stuff was rock?
Mark – This material isn’t packed together as tight as other areas. So the sand grains aren’t heavily cemented like they are in other formations.
So the dozer will rip down the face first, and then back backup and push it into piles.
Emma – Those scoopy things look pretty busy.
Mark – Well, we call those front-end loaders. And those have ten-yard buckets. And they go all day back and forth to load that sand on to the conveyor belts.
Emma – Ten yards? Are we talking ten cubic yards.
Mark – Yeah, ten cubic yards. And that’s about 14 tons of material per bucket load.
Emma- Whew, that’s a sandbox full!
Mark – We mine about 20 to 25 acres a year. And we have about 20 acres of backup reclamation behind us. So this continually moves.
Emma–So it’s a constantly evolving operation?
Mark – Yes, as we progress ahead, we reclaim behind ourselves.
Emma – Where’s it all going?
Mark–Well, it’s all going down there to that big jaw crusher. You can see we load it up on a conveyor belt and it goes to the plant.
Cedric – in Mission Control - That’s, that’s allcool technology guys, but I think you missed something. No, you can’t see it very well. That’s why it’s a potential problem. It’s silica dust, and if you spend too much time inhaling it, it can cause silicosis – you know, lung damage.
Emma – Gotcha. We’re on it. Ut-hum… how come you didn’t tell us about the silica dust? Got something to hide?
Mark – Absolutely not. I think you need to see some cool technology.
Jamie – at weather station – Up here you’ll see a weather station and then our fugitive dust monitors that we are required to have at our sites by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
The weather station will collect information on the direction of the wind, the speed of the wind, and also the temperature. That information is used to calibrate the information that the dust monitor collects as well.
So we’ve got weather stations upwind and weather stations downwind. And then the monitors pick up the dust from either direction. We can utilize that information to know if we’re generating any dust that’s adding to the atmosphere.
Emma – How much have you really found out?
Jamie – Well, this monitor has been running before we even started mining here to collect background information so we could compare it to when we are actually running. We collect data every sixth day, which is on a regular schedule that everyone does so that we can compare the information to mines across the state.
Emma – So that’s all pretty cool, but I just need to know. Have you been generating some dust?
Jamie – Well, we can go to the website and see the data which shows the dust measured is very similar to regional background levels. And 100 percent of the data is well below the national limit that protects air quality.
Not only that, do you hear that?
Jacob – Hear what?
Jamie–Exactly. The mine us just down there below the hill and you can’t hear it.
Emma – Oh, so the sound doesn’t escape either.
Well, there’s not dust here but what about back at the site?
Jamie – Let’s go take a look.
Mark – at mine site – You saw the water truck running earlier?
Emma - Oh yeah.
Mark–The water truck was keeping the dust down. So when these frontend loaders run back and forth from the face, we have the water truck come in. It keeps dust down.
There’s another type of dust that we need to monitor for. It’s occupational dust. And that’s important because that’s what’s generated inside the plant. Our workers can be exposed to that.
You see that big tube there coming down that looks like grasshopper legs? That’s our low-velocity dust collection system. It’s attached to everything you see in here. And it creates a vacuum that sucks up all the dust so the workers don’t get exposed to it.
Jacob – Okay, it looks cool but how do you know it really works?
Mark – Well, we monitor our employees with dust pumps. These little pumps that the employees wear for their whole shift. Then that’s sent away to a special laboratory that analyzes it for silica dust.
Cedric – mission control - Okay, so they’ve passed the air quality checks. But there’s a lot more going on there that can also impact the environment. Like all that water they use? Come on, that’s gotta be an issue!
Jacob – Oh, I guess they really have a water cycle here. We’re going to find this out.
Cedric - Coming up next, a serious investigation about the impacts of using all that water.
VO – Don’t go away, there’s more Into the Outdoors
Billboard #2 – 5 secs.
Commercial #3 – 60 seconds
Stay tuned – There’s still more Into the Outdoors.
Commercial #4 – 60 seconds
We’re back – And now back, Into the Outdoors
Cedric – mission control - So far we’ve decoded the science behind the uses of industrial sand. Then environmentally, we looked at the impact on air quality and the technology they use to control it.
But look at all that water they’re using. They’ve got to be impacting that part of the environment. Are you guys on the trail of all that water?
Emma – Yeah, we are. And just like the water cycle in nature, this place kinda has its own water cycle.
Jacob – First, it’s got to come from somewhere, and their wells look pretty huge too. No telling how they affect the aquifer. You know, the ground water supply below the ground that we can’t see. Time to find out…
Mark – Just like nature has a water cycle, we have our own water cycle here. And it starts with this pump. What you can’t see here is this well goes down into the aquifer and that’s where our water cycle starts. Before any water was pulled out of the aquifer, there was a hydrological study done. And we have three of these wells placed over three and a half miles apart to minimize the impact on the aquifer.
We also have monitoring wells. And that’s important because we need to know if we’re having an impact on that aquifer.
Emma – So what are the results really showing you?
Mark–They’re showing us that we don’t have a sustained impact on the aquifer. So we only need to run these pumps maybe every two or three months because we recycle the majority of our water here.
We’re only pumping 150 gallons a minute but the plant uses 15 thousand gallons a minute. And we’re able to do that because we can recycle our water.
Although that building doesn’t look like much, it filters 99 percent of our water and it does by using thickeners, filter presses and vacuum belts.
Emma – So what are we going to see in that building?
Mark – Well, one really cool thing you’re going to see in that building is a vacuum belt. And so you’re going to see a wet sand and water mix on one side and by the time it gets to the end of the belt it will be dry. So it allows the water to come through but it keeps the sand on top.
Jacob – So what are those thickeners?
Mark –Thickeners allow all the clays and sediment in that water to drop out. And it thickens it into more of a mud. From there that mud will gets pumped in to what we call filter presses. And those work by compacting that mud in between cloths at a really high pressure. And the water is able to leak out. And when you’re done, you have a cake. It takes all the mud and slime out of the water and makes it pure again so we can pump it back to our process.
Jacob – So you protect the ground water that’s cool. But what about the surface water? I see erosion right over there!
Emma – Yeah, fess up.
Mark – Well none of that leaves the site. This site is internally draining.
So all that water and erosion you were worried about in the mine site. That’s all collected and it leaves that area but it ends up back here. This is the end point. This is where we allow it to seep back in. So this is the surface water, the rainwater we catch. When this seeps back in, it’s cleaned by the rocks. So we’re actually recharging part of the aquifer with the stormwater that we collect.
Cedric –in mission control - We already know from other investigations that the sustainability of something needs to include the 3 R’s; reduce, reuse and recycle. And by the looks of their water cycle, they checked all three R’s in that mine operation.
Now for the biggie. They have to be impacting the landscape with all the land they’re tearing up. No way around it. If you dug out all the sand in your sandbox, you’d have a big hole. So when they’re done with this place, there’s going to be a really huge hole, right? Wrong! They can’t do that. Can they?
Hey guys, ask them why they’re trying to “conceal” their mine in a hole.
Jamieon hillside overlooking mine – So as you can tell, mining and reclamation happen continuously. You mine, and then fill with topsoil and reclaim with vegetation.
Emma – Why is it a hole?
Jacob – Yeah, got something to hide?
Jamie – Well it is kind of in a hole and yeah we are hiding it but in a good way. This is a rural community and we wanted to maintain the rural landscape.
But before we even start mining on a site we do wildlife and habitat surveys to understand what’s here. And once we understand what’s here we work the understanding of those species into our reclamation plan.
It’s reviewed by local, state agencies and the public before we can even start mining.
Emma - It only looks like a lot of weeds on a hill, right? But Jamie explained that what you can’t see is the first step of reshaping the landscape. They used sophisticated computer programs along with GPS autopilots in their bulldozers to reshape the land into natural hills and contours. Then it’s time to plant.
Jamie – We come through and plant grasses to establish the soils to prevent erosion. And a few years later once the grasses are established, we come back in and plant trees.