Local officials made their bed, now lay in it! No fore thought obviously to the long term effects and damage. Follow the money people!

John, fact of life is that industry tends to be messy and noisy. Of course your contention is that every town should be historical we'll all make money by selling Chinese made t-shirts to each other. If you want to see boom and bust, go to Stillwater on a cold rainy day like this past Saturday. Tourism is not a panacea for a real economy.

One item that forgot to mention is that the alternate route is 20 miles out of the way, part of which would be on a local township road. How much fuel would be wasted by this process.

An actual fact of life is that tourism is a real economy. It has its ups and downs, but well planned, developed and maintained tourism industry is as real as it gets, just look at the $ spent in tourism in both MN and WI. Where I live tourism is the only industry, and its not going to close up shop 10 years from now when the sand is done. Our money, as an industry stays here, it doesn't go to Connecticut, or off shore. We live here, we invest here, we spend here, we hire here - we create real economies, not just boom or bust. Sacrificing an established industry, tourism for sand just doesn't add up to sound economic policy.

Yes, industry is messy & noisy. Let's not forget deadly. That dust covering the town is a known carcinogen & can cause Scilicosis a lung disease. Ask the gas drillers in Pennsylvania where they are coming down with scilicosis. Towns have the right to tell them no trucks. Who is paying the costs of rebuilding the roads. These are out of state trucks, using gas they bring with them with out of state drivers & miners. So the locals get sick & have to rebuild their own roads out of their reduced tourism dollars. The Chippewa Falls mine runs 550 trucks per day out of their mine, 24/7. Welcome to the new midwest.

it doesn't matter what you like, whether its the RenFest or the Mississippi Valley or the Lake of the Woods, industry will overrun and destroy it all if we let it.

You don't get scilicosis from the sand being used in this industry! The sand used in this industry is a much larger grain size so you can't inhale it! If you got scilicosis just from sand everyone would stop going to the beach or stop there kids from playing in the sandbox! And most of the roads being used are state highways which were built for commerce & will be repaved w/ state dollars, not local dollars. As for roads not covered by state dollars, Mining Companies have agreed to pay a road tax to fix the roads they use, such is the case with the Chippewa Falls company!! Everyone needs to know their facts before jumping to conclusions!!

mnman2012 Get your facts straight. The dust from this sand is linked to silicosis. It's the “carcinogenic crystalline silica dust particulate matter” that does the harm. Silica sand and silicosis go hand and hand.