Gravel mine gets permission to operate 24/7 in UMore Park

When spring arrives and the UMore Park gravel mine starts up after a dormant winter, it will be operating on a new schedule: 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Dakota Aggregates mine, located in Rosemount on land owned by the University of Minnesota, is one of a number of south metro gravel mines that feed construction across the metro. As construction picks up in the economic recovery, so too does the demand for gravel.

Read more in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Gritty issue in Prior Lake: gravel driveways

Prior Lake is kicking up dust about gravel driveways. The City Council may impose a fee for homeowners whose gravel driveways pose public safety concerns for passersby, negatively affect water quality and require extra maintenance from the city, officials said.

Read more in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Crushed stone, sand and gravel consumption increase

An estimated 367 million metric tons (Mt) of crushed stone was produced and shipped for consumption
in the United States in the third quarter of 2013, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. This is an eight percent increase compared with the same period of 2012.

Read more in Pit & Quarry.

SME publishes paper on aggregates contribution to infrastructure

The Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration (SME) published a technical briefing paper about the contribution of the aggregates industry to infrastructure investment. SME also called for full funding of the country's surface transportation programs.

"Restoration of an aging transportation infrastructure in the United States will require the availability and production of a substantial amount of aggregates. Aggregates provide the literal foundation of our nation."

Read the SME paper.

St. Croix's mega-bridge will mostly benefit corporations, not citizens

Post-election, if you want something new to question Rep. Michele Bachmann about, question her involvement in Minnesota's St. Croix River bridge project. Until Bachmann stepped in, the various stakeholder groups were working on completing an appropriate compromise.

Read more in MinnPost.

St. Croix River city faces decision on old mine site

On the bluffs above the St. Croix River, near the first Swedish settlement in Minnesota, a battle of wills is raging over efforts to excavate more than 1 million tons of sand and gravel from an old mine.

Read more in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Drop-dead simple energy idea: Gravel on ski lifts

Last week Bill Gates briefly mentioned that he made an investment in an energy storage startup that he called “gravel on ski lifts.” Contributor Michael Kanellos put two and two together and guessed that Gates’ reference was to the startup Energy Cache. . . . . (It has created) a system of buckets on a line that picks up gravel at the bottom of a hill, and moves the gravel to the top of the hill; when the process is reversed, the gravel moves back down the hill and powers a generator to produce energy.

Read more at GIGAOM.

City column: Decisions coming on gravel mining

Important decisions are coming up for the city of Rosemount on gravel mining proposed for the western one-third UMore Park. And the public will get to have its say during the process.

Read more in Rosemount Town Pages.

Aggregate production up slightly in third quarter

An estimated 619 million metric tons (Mt) of total aggregates were produced and shipped for consumption in the United States in the third quarter of 2011, a very slight increase compared with that of the same period of 2010, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The estimated production for consumption in the first nine months of 2011 was 1.48 billion metric tons (Gt), a slight decrease compared with that of the same period of 2010.

Read more in Pit & Quarry.

NSSGA applauds House passage of bill halting expansion of federal dust regulations

The National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association commends the U.S. House of Representatives for passing H.R.1633, the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act, a bill to protect producers of resource-based products, including aggregates, as well as farmers and ranchers, from increased regulation of a naturally occurring substance.

Read more on the NSSGA website.

Gravel truck hits power lines near Glyndon, causes power outages, $50,000 damage to traffic lights

The raised bed of a gravel truck hit power lines near the intersections of Highway 10 and Highway 9 just east of Glyndon this morning, causing power outages throughout the area and about $50,000 damage to new traffic lights recently installed there.

Read more in the Detroit Lakes Tribune.

Back to the old days? Paved county roads may go back to gravel

Some lesser-traveled county roads may revert to gravel because the Becker County Highway Department just doesn’t have enough money to maintain all the existing paved county roads.

Case in point is County Road 118, a 1.8-mile paved road that goes southeast from Frazee past Fisher Lake to link up with a gravel road in Otter Tail County.

Read more in the Detroit Lakes Tribune.

Goodhue advisory panel rejects sand mining moratorium

The Goodhue County Planning Advisory commission has recommended that county commissioners deny a moratorium on silica sand mining, despite resident opposition to the method.

The issue came up earlier this year when Windsor Permian, a division of Oklahoma-based Windsor Energy, bought 155 acres near Red Wing for $2.6 million.

Read this Minnesota Public Radio story.

Company stores megawatts of energy in gravel-filled tanks

In a couple of years, utilities will do just about anything to be able to store excess power coming from their future renewable sources, such as wind or solar. The good news is that lately several solutions have emerged from privately-funded startups. One of the solutions found that storing energy inside gravel-filled containers is a good idea, and Isentropic Energy, its creator, is really going to build a prototype.

The Pumped Heat Electricity Storage (PHES) is all about pumping heated and pressurized gas in an insulated gravel-filled container. Basically, their system is made of two such containers, one of them heated up to 500 degrees Celsius and the other one frozen down to -160 degrees Celsius in the process, just like in the picture above.

Learn more at Isentropic Ltd.

Red Wing area could be a hotbed for industrial sand

Near the muddy banks of Hay Creek, a popular trout stream, are significant bluffs covered with a hardwood forest of oak, bass wood and black cherry trees.

Underneath the forested land is an increasingly valuable resource called "frac sand," highly sought after for its size and strength. With perfectly round grains that look like brown sugar crystals, the sand is ideal for the oil and natural gas exploration industry, which uses it to extract fuel from underground rock in a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Listen to story at Minnesota Public Radio.

Anger over plans for gravel pit, asphalt hot-mix plant on Highway 34

A Brainerd asphalt company ran into a boiling cauldron of opposition Tuesday over plans to open an existing gravel pit across Highway 34 from the Twin Haven mobile home park.

Anderson Brothers Construction, which specializes in asphalt and bituminous paving, came before the Becker County Planning Commission to request a conditional use permit to mine sand and gravel, crush gravel, and operate a temporary hot mix asphalt plant on the Harold and Marlene Hickel property in Erie Township, about 7 miles east of Detroit Lakes.

Read more in the Detroit Lakes Tribune.

Andover residents determining whether they want gravel road paved

The Andover City Council at its April 5 meeting approved reconstructing a few more paved roads in 2011. It may soon decide whether to add a gravel road to the project list.

Read more at ABC Newspapers.

Making a rural comeback: The old gravel road

In the rolling countryside along the Minnesota border, the lonesome, dusty roads seemingly outnumber the people. So when Tony and Gertie Monat were looking for a place to live 14 years ago, they were happy to find a house with the bonus of a paved surface in front of it.

Now that pavement has been pulverized. The county government couldn't afford to resurface it, and the road in front of Monats' white rambler is back to soft gravel. Amid the regular swirl of dust and flying stones, they can't help but feel they've lost a piece of modern life.

Read more in the Star Tribune.

Meeting with new DNR commissioner

ARM member Dave Edmunds and I met yesterday with the new DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr and Larry Kramka, Assistant Commissioner and Lands & Minerals Division Director on March 14 following the retirement reception for Marti Vadis, outgoing Division Director of the Lands & Minerals Division. The meeting reviewed the ongoing partnership that the aggregate industry has had with the Land & Minerals Division and the aggregate mapping program, water appropriations and the potential impact of the Legacy program on aggregate reserves in Minnesota.

On Thursday, ARM members will have the opportunity to go into more details about our concerns with Assistant Commissioner Kranka.