CHICAGO — Steve Harmon’s house shakes when the mining company 100 yards away blasts into what was once farmland. His patio is constantly covered in a thin layer of fine white sand. He and his neighbors also had their groundwater wells replaced two years ago after iron leached into their drinking water.

The LaSalle County native is simply thankful the sand mine only operates a few days a week.

This is the lesser-known side of the fracking industry that former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have vocally supported on the campaign trail.

Despite a recent proliferation of clean energy sources, both presidential candidates say a domestic supply of emissions-intensive fossil fuels is essential for national security in what political pundits say is an appeal to Pennsylvania voters. The swing state was at the center of the fracking industry boom during the 2000s that transformed the United States from being dependent on foreign fuel sources to the world’s top oil and natural gas producer.

Fracking enables the extraction of oil and gases encased in rock formations thousands of feet underground that are not easily permeable via traditional drilling methods. The process releases large amounts of methane, a gas with 80 times more warming power than carbon dioxide in the short term. Beyond contributing to climate change, the fracking industry has also had wide-reaching impacts on land use and community health, from drilling operations in Pennsylvania to sand mines in Illinois. LaSalle County in north central Illinois sits on rich deposits of silica sand, the optimal ingredient for a pressurized cocktail of sand, water and chemicals that is essential for fracking.

“The oil and gas companies have tried to make fracking seem like a drilling technique but we’re really talking about a vast transformation of rural landscapes into industrial ones,” said Megan Hunter, Earthjustice senior attorney.

The cocktail is injected into bedrock to fracture it and force once-trapped oil and natural gas to the surface. Most of this drilling has happened in Pennsylvania, North Dakota and Texas, which have richer fossil fuel reserves and less restrictive regulations than Illinois.

However, little attention and oversight has been given to the sand mines in LaSalle County that proliferated because of drilling operations in these other states.

Concerns mount as fracking booms

LaSalle County’s sand mining industry, which dates back to the late 1800s and historically provided sand for glassmaking, boomed in tandem with fracking in the 2000s and 2010s. Three new mines opened — including Northern White Sand, the one next to Harmon’s house, and another bordering a state park — and three mines significantly expanded.

“There was no increased demand from the glass industry, this was an entirely fracking-driven proposition,” said Ted Auch, the Midwest program director of the nonprofit FracTracker Alliance. He estimates that the mined acres in LaSalle County have nearly doubled since 2007. Today, sand mines occupy nearly 4,500 acres, equivalent to 600 football fields. Most of the land they expanded to had once been farms.

Concerns began mounting among residents whose families had made their living farming LaSalle County’s highly productive land for generations.

“We’ve got some of the best black dirt around. Everyone out here knows farming is so good around here because the guy upstairs put eight inches of black dirt here,” said another lifelong LaSalle County resident and farmer Michael Rogowski. “The sand mines don’t look at it that way. They just look at it as a place where they’re going to make some money.”

Within a few years, the sand mining industry, which had coexisted with farmers for over a century, was growing too fast and becoming an enemy.

Kevin Hamilton had worked in the mines since the 1970s and never faced animosity from his neighbors toward his work until the fracking boom. When a bar he and his co-workers frequented for happy hour hung an anti-fracking sign in the window, it lost their business.

“That’s what we do for a living. Now you don’t want us,” Hamilton recalled telling the owner as he and his co-workers crossed the street and never went back.

One yearslong legal battle successfully deterred a mine from breaking ground just outside North Utica. The residents argued that the mine would jeopardize their health and safety, as well as the productivity of their farmland.

While the silica sand itself is not dangerous, the mining process releases fine particulate matter, including crystalline silica, a carcinogen that is extremely easy to inhale. Long-term exposure to it can cause chronic and progressive lung diseases including silicosis, cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Crystalline silica is small enough to travel through the bloodstream, causing kidney and autoimmune diseases too, according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Since crystalline silica is widely considered a workplace hazard rather than an ambient air quality concern, the EPA does not monitor it, so it’s difficult to gauge its impact on neighboring residents’ health.

If not through the air, sand mines can deplete and pollute already limited supplies of groundwater that people depend on for drinking water and crop irrigation. Groundwater naturally flows down to the large pits in the ground, which lowers the water table, causing wells to run dry. Mining can also leach harmful chemicals into local water systems.

Despite these concerns, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources does not regulate silica sand mining either, according to department spokesperson Jayette Bolinski. Instead, regulation falls on the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, which is exclusively concerned with worker safety.

Given the known risks for prolonged exposure to crystalline silica, the administration enacted a rule in June that lowered the permissible exposure limit and mandated improved protections against the airborne carcinogen.

Mining drops, but threat looms

When the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp decline in crude oil demand, the fracking industry floundered and the sand mines went down with it. Hamilton was one of many mine workers who was laid off.

Though the fracking industry rebounded, sand mining in LaSalle County has not. During the downturn, many oil and gas companies opted to use lower-quality frac sand closer to their drilling operations and have stuck with it.

The mining companies that broke ground in LaSalle County in the 2000s have merged and consolidated. Northern White Sands, the mine by Harmon, was acquired by Pennsylvania-based SmartSand and is operating at reduced capacity. The parent company did not respond to requests for comment.

The Ohio-based company Covia, Texas-based company U.S. Silica and Manley Brothers of Indiana also have operational mines in the area.

Now, on the way to his farming job, between cornfields, Rogowski drives past a handful of inactive mines.

“They just closed the door, shut the gates, and it’s just a big hole in the ground,” he said. “It’s the worst thing that anybody can think of. It just gets abandoned; they just leave it.”

Today, many have resigned to living in the debris of the fracking boom and tolerating the mines that are still operational.

“Nobody wants it in their backyard, and I wish I didn’t have it here but it’s here, but we’ve learned pretty much to accept it,” Harmon said, brushing off the way knick-knacks fall off the shelves when his house shakes as a normal inconvenience of daily life.

“The fracking is something that we need to do to become energy independent,” he continued, repeating a sentiment Harris and Trump expressed during their only debate last month.

Recanting her earlier pledge to ban fracking, Harris cemented her current support of the industry by saying, “My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.”

Trump has long supported fracking as part of his trademark “America First” foreign policy vision.

With a warm political climate, the threat of another big sand mining boom in La Salle County is always right around the corner and, Auch with FracTracker Alliance believes, more likely than not.

By consolidating and automating processes, the sand mining companies are positioning themselves to cut labor costs and keep profiting even with lower demand.

“Automation, automation, automation. They’re taking note from the playbook of the coal mining industry,” Auch said. “The goal is to remove the need for labor, for well-paying union jobs.”

So, if sand mining does have another boom in LaSalle County, it likely won’t bring back the jobs. The mining companies are, however, well-positioned to expand operations. Beyond the 4,500 acres of broken ground, Auch estimates that mining companies are holding onto an additional 6,700 acres in LaSalle County. Some are being leased to family farmers, but if the economics become favorable, the companies are poised to more than double their footprint.

Yet, to many, that threat doesn’t feel real. The downturn of the sand mining industry in recent years, even if temporary, has already caused local concerns about the industry’s impact on farmland and community health to recede. Today, many of those in right-leaning LaSalle County who fought the sand mines less than a decade ago look favorably on fossil fuels.

“Honestly, I like having cheaper gas, don’t you? I’m not saying I’m all for fracking, but at the same time, that fracking doesn’t go on around here,” Rogowski said. Less than a decade ago, he was fighting against the expansion of sand mines, a direct consequence of the fracking boom.

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