"Sand mining is coming quickly," says University of Iowa professor

University of Iowa Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health David Osterberg told Winneshiek County supervisors at noon Monday that research shows mining rarely creates wealth.

In a 45-minute presentation to supervisors, Osterberg said mining is a boom and bust industry whose immediate gains can be offset by long-term losses to tourism and other industries.

He cited several studies about the topic, including a 2013 study of Pepin County in Wisconsin that concluded "The cost of local frac sand mining may exceed the benefits in the short term and long term."

Osterberg told supervisors any regulations which allowed frac sand mining should at least contain language prohibiting the operations near sinkholes and trout streams.  But he's worried about the cumulative effects of several frac sand mining operations on the groundwater of Northeast Iowa.

Osterberg is a former Democratic state representative who was chairman of the House Energy and Environmental Protection Committee as well as the Agriculture Committee. He was the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1998 and worked as special energy consultant to the Director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Osterberg holds advanced degrees in Water Resources Management and Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.