The documentary The Price of Sand features numerous western Wisconsin sand mining facilities, including the EOG Resources processing plant in Chippewa Falls.

When he heard that an energy company was making plans to develop the land next to his in Minnesota, Jim Tittle and his brother decided to look into the operation. They found that the company wanted to build an open-pit silica mine that would run 24 hours a day and seven days a week.  After driving to a different mine to see what it was like and talking to the people who lived near it, Tittle made a series of YouTube videos that received tons of views over the period of a summer.  As the videos gained popularity, Tittle decided he really wanted something that people could see as a group, so he started producing a film. With a lot of hard work, The Price of Sand documentary came to be.  

Silica sand is desirable because its use in hydraulic fracturing makes it easier for companies to get more oil out of underground wells. The Price of Sand details frac sand mining in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin because mines are opening the fastest in these states. Wisconsin’s frac sand industry is ahead of the others because there are more areas in Wisconsin where it is geologically easy to access silica sand deposits. For this documentary, Tittle spent time in numerous western Wisconsin locales: Buffalo County, Trempealeau County, Chippewa Falls, Cooks Valley, Ellsworth, Fountain City, Knapp, Maiden Rock, Menomonie, New Auburn, Prairie du Chien, Prairie Farm, Stockholm, and Tunnel City. He tried to find people who were representative of mining issues. “Most importantly, I wanted to talk to people who had some experience with this and who had specific issues with it,” Tittle says. He wanted to hear what people living near mines had to say about issues such as high volume trucking, the effect on their property values, and the impact on their quality of life. “I want those who watch the film to remember the individual stories of these people when topics of frac mining come up,” Tittle says.

Many Chippewa Valley locals make appearances in the documentary.  Crispin Pierce, a UW-Eau Claire professor of environmental public health who has researched how sand mining impacts air quality, was interviewed for the film and believes the work Tittle is doing on silica mining provides valuable information and perspective. The Price of Sand also features a song by Coconut and the Duke, a band with members from the Chippewa Valley.

The Price of Sand will be screened at The Volume One Gallery, 205 N. Dewey St., on May 23 at 6:30pm. A discussion will follow.