Fracking is a nightmare for the environment and the future. But it's not likely to stop anytime soon unless more people realize it's not just a free magic money faucet, and instead more like playing russian roulette with 5 bullets. And an Uzi.
But the danger to the small villages and towns along the upper Mississippi is a little less obvious. I don't know of any fracking happening nearby, but it requires high quality silica sand, and the extraction of that sand has its own health, environmental, and economic risks.
Jim Tittle is making a documentary about the price we pay for the sand taken from these river bluffs. Here are a few of my friends and neighbors talking about it.
