According to NPR reports and other sources the Earth isn't producing sand fast enough to keep up with the humans.
A group calling itself the Missouri Sedimentation Action Coalition is blaming the sand hills of Nebraska for the silt in Lewis and Clark Lake and is saying they might sell recovered sediment as fracking sand to the oilfields of North Dakota. Lewis and Clark Lake is thirty percent full of toxic sediment.
As silt fills irrigation diversion dams lower quality water with higher salinity enters the system ultimately rendering soils incapable of supporting life. Snow and rainwater capture provide much higher quality water for irrigation likely making the beleaguered Lewis and Clark boondoggle obsolete before it's finished or even fully funded.
Rivers often disperse the extra sediment from behind a dam within weeks or months of dam removal. Removal of the Fort Edward Dam on New York’s Hudson River released so much contaminated sediment that the river was later named a Superfund site. A similar fate would befall the Missouri River if dams were not dredged before being decertified; but, migratory fish would recolonize newly accessible habitat within a matter of days.
The Army Corps of Engineers have cancelled Spring Pulses on the Missouri River not because of low flows but because the silt is so poisonous it would kill the very species it says it's trying to preserve.
Recall South Dakota's quisling earth hater former governor built a house in a swamp that flooded and received a generous self-reimbursement from insurance coverage underwritten by his own company knowing Lake Sharpe is filling with silt.
The US has thousands of mountains of glass cullet from the municipal waste stream just waiting to be repurposed: Japan recycles nearly 100% of her glass.
We sell millions of tons of salvage material to India and Asia to be recycled while tearing up our own ground mining for virgin minerals while steel and plastics, that could be petroleum, are buried in landfills.
South Dakota already has open pit frac sand mines competing to tear into yet another thousand acres. It takes enormous amounts of energy to melt and millions of yards of earth to disturb every year to mine the silica used in glass manufacture.
Earth haters in Congress are voting to end protections for water.
Mining waste glass from landfills or sediment for fracking makes some sense but let's call it remediation of surplus water instead of greenwashing a century of abuses perpetrated by the extractive and agriculture industries.
As silt fills irrigation diversion dams lower quality water with higher salinity enters the system ultimately rendering soils incapable of supporting life. Snow and rainwater capture provide much higher quality water for irrigation likely making the beleaguered Lewis and Clark boondoggle obsolete before it's finished or even fully funded.
Rivers often disperse the extra sediment from behind a dam within weeks or months of dam removal. Removal of the Fort Edward Dam on New York’s Hudson River released so much contaminated sediment that the river was later named a Superfund site. A similar fate would befall the Missouri River if dams were not dredged before being decertified; but, migratory fish would recolonize newly accessible habitat within a matter of days.
The Army Corps of Engineers have cancelled Spring Pulses on the Missouri River not because of low flows but because the silt is so poisonous it would kill the very species it says it's trying to preserve.
Recall South Dakota's quisling earth hater former governor built a house in a swamp that flooded and received a generous self-reimbursement from insurance coverage underwritten by his own company knowing Lake Sharpe is filling with silt.
The US has thousands of mountains of glass cullet from the municipal waste stream just waiting to be repurposed: Japan recycles nearly 100% of her glass.
We sell millions of tons of salvage material to India and Asia to be recycled while tearing up our own ground mining for virgin minerals while steel and plastics, that could be petroleum, are buried in landfills.
South Dakota already has open pit frac sand mines competing to tear into yet another thousand acres. It takes enormous amounts of energy to melt and millions of yards of earth to disturb every year to mine the silica used in glass manufacture.
Earth haters in Congress are voting to end protections for water.
Mining waste glass from landfills or sediment for fracking makes some sense but let's call it remediation of surplus water instead of greenwashing a century of abuses perpetrated by the extractive and agriculture industries.
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