Turns out our sand is valuable

Steve Witt has lived atop the sands of Monroe County for more than 60 years and remembers when the stuff wasn't good for anything but growing pine trees. "We tried all kinds of things with it, " said Witt. "You'd cut the weeds down, (but) you couldn't even grow hay."

Turns out, nowadays, it can help "grow" something a lot more surprising, and valuable: abundant - and cheap - natural gas. Wisconsin is nowhere close to any of this country's natural gas deposits. But western Wisconsin and part of Minnesota hold the key to capturing it. We have the best - or at least the most accessible - "frac sand" in the entire world.

Read more in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.