The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County by Jerry Apps Page B

told a famous Indian chief once got the Village of Link Lake’s founder, Increase Joseph Link, to pledge that the tree would never be cut.
    Has the Link Lake Village Board lost its senses? Is the board so under the thumb of Marilyn Jones’s Economic Development Council that all they can see is jobs and dollar signs? Do they not realize that when a community ignores its history that it loses its soul? Communities, like people, have histories, and when they forget their histories, they forget who they are.
    Link Lake’s historical society, under the able leadership of Emily Higgins, knows that history provides a foundation for a community and gives it life and a sense of place. Higgins and her group have worked hard to convince the Link Lake Economic Development Council and the Link Lake Village Board of the error of their ways—apparently with no success.
    In addition to the Alstage Sand Mining Company’s lack of interest in local history along with the village board’s don’t-let-history-get-in-theway-of-progress mantra, I have heard no discussion about the impact of a sand mine on the environment. No one in Link Lake has mentioned the enormous amounts of water necessary for processing this special sand. No one has talked about the health dangers from the dust created by these mining operations. No one has mentioned the need to improve the roads in and around Link Lake to accommodate the hundreds of trucks that will haul the sand to the rail yards in Willow River, to say nothing about the increased traffic that will result. Are jobs so important that the creation of them trumps all other matters? It would appear so for Link Lake’s Economic Development Council and the Link Lake Village Board.
    Is there still time to reverse this awful decision? Let’s hope so. It will be a sad day in Link Lake when the Trail Marker Oak comes down and huge heavy-laden trucks begin hauling Link Lake’s precious sand to the rail line in Willow River, where it will become part of fracking operations in the west, where this dubious process of procuring natural gas and petroleum previously impossible to access is occurring.
    But, as some of us are apt to say, it’s never too late. Any decision made can be unmade. I am inviting readers of this column to write their thoughts to the Ames County Argus , one of the newspapers in which this column appears and one read by the majority of citizens in Ames County and the Link Lake community. Let the Link Lake Village Board know the error of their ways, and let the Link Lake Economic Development Council know that the future of a community depends on more than jobs.

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Editor’s Response
    AMES COUNTY ARGUS
    Reaction to Stony Field Sand Mining Column
    By Billy Baxter, editor
    Never in my many years of editing the Ames County Argus has a column writer prompted so many people to write letters to this newspaper. More than 200 letters to the editor arrived at this newspaper since the column was first published, with more arriving each day. Most come as e-mails, but regular letters have filled our mailbox as well.
    Stony Field, the award-winning but mysterious environmental writer, is prone to stir up people, but with his recent comments about a sand mine supported by the Link Lake Economic Development Council and recently approved by the Link Lake Village Board, he hit a hornet’s nest. Letters are coming from throughout the country, from the east and the west coast, from north and south, from rural areas and major urban centers.
    The letters run about two to one in favor of Stony Field’s position—he argues quite convincingly that a community needs to attend to its history and be concerned about the environmental impact of a new development beyond merely supporting an idea because of the potential for additional jobs in the community.
    We obviously do not have sufficient space in the Ames County Argus to print all of the letters we have received, so