PILOT MOUND, Minn. – Frac sand mining promoter Rick Frick now wants to open a mine just over the Winona County line — after years of rejections in Winona County to mine frac sand. Frick filed a 37-page study with Fillmore County authorities for a 50-acre mining site is near Pilot Mound. The site is:
> Comprised of a 90-foot geological mound that would be scalped to remove frac sand.
> Currently fallow pasture and grassland owned by heirs of Alice Dabelstein, who died at age 91 in 2022.
> Triangulated roughly between Rushford in Fillmore County, Chatfield in Olmsted County and St. Charles in Winona County.
> Drains snow and rain through Money, Torkelson and Trout creeks into the North Branch and and Main Stem of the Root River and also underground aquifers.
Mining would be in 10-ace increments with reseeding and reforestation as the processes continues. Mining would be over several years with as many as five trucks an hour hauling sand to Canadian Pacific railheads in Lewiston, Mankato, St. Charles, and Winona. Unclear is where the sand would be processed into a pure form to minimize shipping weight for shipping to Alberta, Louisiana and Texas oil fields at competitive transportation rates. In western Wisconsin, which has established frac-mining industry, the mines generally have massive trackside processing plants. Details of the current Dabelstein proposal are in a legally required environmental assessment worksheet. The worksheet was submitted to Blake Lea, land use for Fillmore County. Lea has invited comment by June 27. Eventually the proposal will need approval of the five-member member Fillmore County Board. Fillmore County’s ordinance allows frac sand mining but limits the total number of mines to five. A gauntlet of state and county permits also would be needed.
Scratching into the lode. Frac-sand hunters have been poking into southeast Minnesota’s geologic mounds for easily accessed super-fine sands to support the oil-drilling industry in Alberta, Texas and the Gulf Coast. Image: Steve Lunde
Dabelstein. Namesake of new frac-sand mine proposal. Died at Cottagewood Senior Community in Rochester in December 2022. In her later years she had considered St. Charles home.
Targeting 90-foot hump of earth hear Pilot Mound
Frick’s original vision: A frac empire
In the mining industry Rick Frick is what’s called a promoter. He’s good at stirring interest in projects he touts as having potential to yield fortunes. Over the years in southeast Minnesota he has signed leases with land-owners, mostly farmers, for mining their property for frac sand. The deals look like win-wins for landowners and oil companies that desperately want high-quality frac sand that’s near the surface for relatively inexpensive extraction. Frick gets a cut as the arranger. His biggest scheme was in 2011 when eproposed11 mines in southeast Minnesota. It all fell apart. The only exception was the so-called Campbell mine near Saratoga in extreme southwest Winona County. With the Campbell Mine, the County Board limited producing sand only for bedding farm animals – nothing approaching the industrial-scale extraction Frick had sought Big Oil drilling n far-away oil fields. Frick, age 60, raises hoses off County Road 9 near Houston, his current address. Over the years he has moved around a lot in the Driftless region — Dakota, LaCrescent, Peterson, Preston, Rushford and Winona. He has created numerous companies for his enterprises. These include Minnesota Propellant, Minnesota Sands, Triple C Excavation, and Wisconsin Propellant Resources. A spokesperson for Frick, Mike Zipko of Saint Paul-based Velocity Public Affairs, told the Winona Post that the Alice Dabelstejn project is separate from Frick’s earlier endeavors. Even so, the project has familial connections with Frick’s now-abandoned but nearby Roger Dabelstein and Nisbit projects.
Mines everywhere. In 2010s Frick envisioned surface mines all over southeast Minnesota. Public resistance killed the Winona County plans. Fillmore County was less restrictive but imposed placed a cap of no more than five mines. People around Pilot Mound have lived more than a decade with the on-again off-again specter of industrial-scale mining. A sampling of sentiment found ongoing displeasure.
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Frac sand profile
The oil-drilling industry likes the slippery quality of certain sands to lubricate boring to recover oil embedded in deep rock formations. Once reached, the formations are injected with highly pressurized liquid to shatter the rock and free the trapped oil and gas. This hydraulic fracturing process is called fracking and hence the term “frac sand.” Geologists say the world’s finest frac sands are in the Driftless Region of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Prime sand deposits, mostly near the surface, are in southeast Minnesota’s Fillmore, Houston and Winona counties. Critics say that excavating to recover frac sand is environmentally disruptive. The sand’s dust is so fine that it’s a health threat, the critics also say. In Winona the County Board banned frac-sand mining in 2016. The oil and mining industries put lots of money to back Rick Frick’s company, Minnesota Sands, in opposing the ban. Their main argument was in local as well as self-serving economic advantages. However, the county’s right to control the extraction of its natural sources and to protect health has been upheld in consistently the courts.
Fracking’s future
The once-flourishing frac-sand mining industry in Jackson and Trempealeau in Wisconsin has faltered since the late 2010s with declining demand. Several mines have closed. There have been significant hundreds of layoffs. However, Frick sees prices rebounding with southeast Minnesota’s sand being well positioned, and “incredibly valuable” because of its satiny creaminess.
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