MN State Senator Says: Rural Areas Should Expect to Smell Bad

Home > Environment Posted February 27, 2013 - 11:30am

Potentially environmentally hazardous dust and bad smells are just "inconveniences" that people living in rural areas should expect to put up with because they live in a farm area. So says Republican Minnesota State Senator Julie Rosen.

She made the comments as Minnesota considers more stringent regulations for frac sand mining and transportation. The mining industry is regulated by a patchwork of weak local laws that have proven no match for the boom in silica sand mining that fuels the fracking for oil in nearby North Dakota.

Transcript: It just seems like every time there's an issue, and whether it's a transmission line coming through, now it's silica sand, or it's maybe some feedlot regulation? This is agriculture. People live in agricultural land. They have to expect the smells, the dust and the inconveniences and their roads beat up because that is what happens. (Crowd moans) Mr. Chair?

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