WINONA, Minn. – Winona police plan extra staffing for Steamboat Days weekend — in addition to the usual two sergeant duty officers and five officers on the street duty. For the Sunday parade there will be four extra-duty officers assigned, said department spokesperson Brad Barrientos. Four other extra-duty officers will be located at the beer tent. Also, one officer is being assigned as security for Miss America, Madison Marsh, who is riding in the parade on Sunday and appearing at an autograph event. The Department is standing by for additional security requests from the Steamboat Days committee. The special police staffing is volunteer overtime for officers. For unfilled slots, Barrientos said, the Department looks to call on sheriff’s deputies as paid volunteers and officers, alson in uniform, from Goodview, LaCrescent, Lewiston and St. Charles.

Earlier: Bandshell concert kicks off Steamboat Days

Eye level in the lilacs. While Mama Cardinal is away looking for nourishment to bring back to the nest, this little hatchling up Peterson Creek from Farmers Park is neither frightened nor amused at the camera a few inches away. Just hungry. Image: Steve Lunde

WINONA, Minn. – The Fire Department reported 46 emergency medical calls plus 19 fire calls in recent days:

> Tuesday, June 11: 6 medical calls plus 2 fire calls.

> Monday, June 10: 4 medical calls plus 2 fire calls.

> Sunday, June 9: 3 medical calls plus 1 fire call.

> Saturday, June 8: 6 medical calls plus 2 fire calls.

> Friday, June 7: 9 medical calls plus 5 fire calls.

> Thursday, June 6: 4 medical calls plus 6 fire calls.

> Wednesday, June 5: 12 medical calls plus 1 fire call.

Earlier: Emergency, fire crews make 43 calls

LACROSSE, Wis. – A suburban Shelby woman found dead in a bedroom at her house two days ago was savagely beaten, according to a criminal complaint against her husband. An autopsy found 50 sharp force injuries on her body and four bite wounds, the complaint said. State Crime Lab investigators were quoted that blood was smeared on the walls. The body, covered in blood, was in the bedroom. She had a knife in one hand, but her wounds, investigators said, did not seem to be self-inflicted. Inexplicably the criminal complaint doesn’t identify the woman except as E.F. It is her husband, Zachary W. Fritz, whom the complaint accuses of first-degree murder. When deputies arrived in response t a 911 call, the husband was in the house and covered in his wife’s blood, according to the complaint. Deputies quote Fritz as saying his wife killed herself.

Earlier: Husband held in gruesome LaCrosse slaying

Verbatim

Andrew Burdick, assistant prosecutor: “This is a situation where the defendant was found in the home covered in his wife’s blood The defendant said that she had killed herself. The stab wounds, the bite marks on her face the blunt force trauma was not consistent with the self-inflicted injury.”

LACROSSE, Wis. – A judge ordered a suburban Shelby man held in the gruesome and violent death his wife at their house. Bail was set a $1 million for Zachary W. William Fritz, 39. Judge Scott Horne, who set the bail, called the crime “extremely serious.” Meanwhile, the county attorney was drafting criminal charges. Fritz was arrested in the house after a 911 call.

Earlier: LaCrosse woman’s death seen as homicide

Fritz. Records reveal a 2019 domestic abuse incident he was found not guilty due to a mental defect.

WINONA, Minn. – A man returned from two weeks away and found his East End place ransacked. He called police about 10:25 a.m. He said he hadn’t yet yet determined what might be missing. Police began checking surveillance video for clues. The address: In the 1100 block of Sugar Loaf Road.

Olst Trailhead Park. On the Root River in Houston at the site of the planned new home of International Owl Center. Image: Steve Lunde

Earlier: Owl Center unveils future home sketches

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

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.

Earlier: County’s frac lawyer lauds ‘no mandamus’ call

Earlier: Aspiring frac firm rehashes failed arguments

Earlier: Anti-frac activist: Democracy wins

Earlier: Earlier: Supreme Court won’t hear Winona fracking case

Earlier: Supreme Court won’t hear Winona fracking case

Earlier: Supreme Court won’t hear Winona fracking case

Earlier: Winona frac ban appealed to U.S. high court

Earlier; Conservationists: Fracking greed will lose

THUNDER BAY, Ont. – Divers found a 13-foot crack in the steel skin of the giant ore-carrier Michipicoten, which suddenly had taken on water 50 miles out in Lake Superior on Saturday. The crack was one-half inch to one inch wide below the water line in the bow area. After the hull cracked, the Michipicoten made it 50 miles to the Keefer Terminal in Thunder Bay, where divers went down to inspect damage. A U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson, Joe Snyder, said it appeared there had a stress fracture in the hull of the 82-year-old carrier. A ballast tank flooded and so to did empty space between the hatch floor and the hull, Snyder said. Further inspections will take place before repairs begin. Snyder dismissed early speculation that the boat hit a submerged subject. The Michipicoten was built in 1952 as the coal-fired steamer Elton Hoyt II. A new iwner converted the vessek to diesel propulsion in 1953 and changed the name,

Earlier: Ore-carrier’s hull rips open on Lake Superior

Seaworthy? The Michipicoten’s scarred and stained hull suggests less than stellar maintenance The carrier, built in 1952, is owned by a subsidiary of Rand Logistics, which operates 10 U.S.-flagged and six Canadian-flag vessels on the Great Lakes.

If Birds could talk. One of their flock could have a tale to tell. Image: Steve Lunde

GPS reveals all: Temporarily nesting in Onalaska

WINONA, Minn. – One of those Bird rental e-scooters vanished the other day somewhere around the Winona tourism center on Lake Winona off Huff Street. Later the Bird’s built-in GPS tracking system pinged from 33 miles away in the LaCrosse suburb of Onalaska. As a bird flies, the distance would have been a lot less than 33 miles, but who knows the route it took. Police are inclined to believe it hitched a ride in the trunk of a car or the bed of a pickup. Winona police have asked Onalaska police to check the address showing on GPS and and to pick up the Bird and send it home. Like a homing pigeon perhaps.

ST.PAUL, Minn. – The 2024 Minnesota Legislature opened original birth records for adults who were adopted as children. Beginning July 1, Minnesota becomes the 50th to state to allow adoptees to obtain their birth information. Requests need to be filed with the state Health Department. Biological parents can flag birth records as something they prefer to be divulged, but the choice is not theirs.

SHELBY, Wis.  – Police found a woman slashed, bloodied and dead on a bed in a home in suburban Shelby on the LaCrosse south end. Her husband was covered in blood himself and was arrested on the spot. LaCrosse County Sheriff John Siegel declined to release details except that deputies had been responding to a 911 call and that the death was being investigated as a homicide. Other sources said the man and woman were married. A 4-year-old daughter apparently slept through the violence and woke up when deputies arrived. The house, on Redwood Court, is in a leafy neighborhood of middle-price homes. The child’s maternal grandfather picked her up and took her to his place.

What’s where at Steamboat Days. Carnival now in two sections half a block apart on Center Street and connected by a row of arcades. See yellow-green patches on the the map. As always, the flashy lights tinny music and shouting barkers won’t be hard to find.

New Levee hotel pre-empts carnival site

WINONA, Minn. – The flashy glitter of the Steamboat Days carnival won’t be at the Levee this year – or probably ever again. The former site – on the three blocks between Main and Walnut streets, behind the movie house on Second Street – is torn up for construction of the new Levee hotel. So Faribault-based Goldstar Amusements is setting up its attractions on two city-owned parking lots on Center street. The midway opens Thursday at 3 p.m. Some Steamboat activities will remain near the river, though. These include the Levee entertainment tent on the Levee and the farmers market on the stub of Main Steet.

Earlier: Winona carny contractor fined for worker abuse

Earlier: Steamboat Days too far to walk? Then shuttle

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Earlier: Capping Winona’s 2024 Steamboat Days harbormaster

Winona now. Next Minnesota stops for Goldstar Amusements include Lake City. Swanville and Delano, Cannon Falls, Lakeville,  Faribault, Rochester, Jordan, Albert Lea, Lake Elmo, Austin, Waconia.