/167980

How Rural America Got Fracked | Ellen Cantarow (The Nation)
►http://www.thenation.com/article/167980/how-rural-america-got-fracked

March in Wisconsin used to mean snow on the ground, temperatures so cold that farmers worried about their cows freezing to death. But as I traveled around rural townships and villages in early March to interview people about frac-sand mining, a little-known cousin of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” daytime temperatures soared to nearly eighty degrees—bizarre weather that seemed to be sending a meteorological message. In this troubling spring, Wisconsin’s prairies and farmland fanned out to undulating hills that cradled the land and its people. Within their embrace, the rackety calls of geese echoed from ice-free ponds, bald eagles wheeled in the sky and deer leaped in the brush. And for the first time in my life, I heard the thrilling warble of sandhill cranes. (...) Source: The Nation

This is a “must read” article

How Rural America Got Fracked - The Nation
Ellen Cantarow
May 21, 2012

This is a “must read” article

►http://www.thenation.com/article/167980/how-rural-america-got-fracked

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.

If the world can be seen in a grain of sand, watch out. As Wisconsinites are learning, there’s money (and misery) in sand—and if you’ve got the right kind, an oil company may soon be at your doorstep.

March in Wisconsin used to mean snow on the ground, temperatures so cold that farmers worried about their cows freezing to death. But as I traveled around rural townships and villages in early March to interview people about frac-sand mining, a little-known cousin of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,” daytime temperatures soared to nearly eighty degrees—bizarre weather that seemed to be sending a meteorological message.

In this troubling spring, Wisconsin’s prairies and farmland fanned out to undulating hills that cradled the land and its people. Within their embrace, the rackety calls of geese echoed from ice-free ponds, bald eagles wheeled in the sky and deer leaped in the brush. And for the first time in my life, I heard the thrilling warble of sandhill cranes.

Yet this peaceful rural landscape is swiftly becoming part of a vast assembly line in the corporate race for the last fossil fuels on the planet. The target: the sand in the land of the cranes.