Director's Cut

>> A farm south of his place had been quietly sold for $2.6 million, about three times what it was worth. The buyer was an oil company. Geology isn't my strong suit, but John has a degree in it. He confirmed what I thought. There's no oil in Goodhue County. We didn't know it yet, but our county was on the brink of a gold rush for sand. Frac sand. >> Hi, welcome to "Director's Cut." I'm Pete Schwaba, and that was a clip from "The Price of Sand" a documentary that explores frac sand mining and the effects it's had on communities in Wisconsin and Minnesota. We're joined today by the film's director, Jim Tittle. Jim, welcome to "Director's Cut." >> Thanks, Pete. >> Okay, so I think a lot of people have heard of fracking. But tell us, what is frac sand mining and how it relates to fracking. >> Well, frac sand is a special kind of sand. It's pure silica. It's used in the process of fracking. Fracking is an energy extraction process. They pump a slurry of water and this special sand into an oil well to get more oil and gas out of it. It takes a lot of this sand. Wisconsin, northern Iowa and Minnesota have the sand. So frac sand mining is the mining of the sand for fracking. >> Okay. You mentioned your brother in that clip we just saw. How has this process affected you or people you know on a personal level? >> Well, about three years ago I'd never heard of fracking. I didn't know what that meant. Then my brother, who lives in our home town, called me up and said, the land next to Mom's house sold for a lot of money. We don't know why. We did some investigation and found out they wanted to build a 150 acre open-pit mine in this corn field. That's how, immediately, it affected me. I wanted to know, why are they going to build an open-pit mine there? It seemed incredible. >> Right. >> From there I started exploring and trying to learn, what's the reason for this? Really, when you say, how it has it affected me? The way it affected me personally is I became a lot more aware of how the oil and gas industry is affecting small towns, people out in the country, and my family in particular. >> It had to be more than just this mine that went in to make a film, to dedicate part of your life to undertake the making of a documentary like this. You say you're not anti-mining, but what is it about frac sand mining other than the issue with the house that you feel you needed to tell this story. >> The mine didn't go in. In fact, the neighbors were galvanized into action. A group was formed, other groups were formed, political pressure was applied. Our county really reacted strongly against frac sand mining. My contribution to that process was to make the film. I got curious. I wanted to know, where is this happening? Right away I found out, well, it's happening everywhere in Wisconsin. That was my motivation. Then I'm just by nature a curious guy, so once I got into it I really wanted to find out as much as I could. >> Yeah, I think you did that just fine. Making a movie is a big undertaking. Were there big-- Well, let's see another clip and then we'll come back. Here's another clip from "The Price of Sand." >> We have sandstone all over our county. But I wasn't sure what the valuable kind looked like. So, my brother offered to show me. We drove down Highway 58 about a mile past the oil company property, to a cliff by the roadside. >> Watch your step. The cliff was white Jordan Sandstone, about 500 million years old. They make glass out of it, and it's in toothpaste. Regular sand is full of all sorts of things. But this is pure silica. Smooth, round, and extremely hard. The oil industry mixes frac sand with chemicals and water and pumps it into wells under high pressure. The pressure cracks the shale and frac sand props the cracks open, so oil and gas can flow out. Hydraulic fracturing, fracking, is the hot new technology in the energy business. And demand for frac sand has gone through the roof. An open pit industrial sand mine seemed like a bad thing for Goodhue County, but I've never seen one. At that point, there were only two of these mines in Minnesota. I had to see what we were dealing with. So, I took a short road trip to see the biggest one. You can't see much of the Unimin Mine from the road. What I did see was disturbing. >> Tell us, what did you see in Goodhue County? >> Well, I went to this mine. I went to Google and I said, sand mine or silica mine. Frac sand is silica, and silica is used for windshields and glass. It's not just used for fracking. There were a couple of silica mines in Minnesota and I wanted to see them. I drove down to Le Sueur, which was, I don't know, a couple of hours. I got there and the scale of this thing just blew me away. It's just huge! It's a huge, huge open-pit mine. That was my first impression. The other was that it had been there for quite a while. There were big berms. There was lots of infrastructure. You know, it was a heavy industrial operation. Now, I'd seen sand pits before. That's kind of what I was thinking, a sand pit. Well, I wasn't a sand pit. It was a big, huge industrial mine. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> I've been brushing my teeth with regular sand toothpaste. Am I making a mistake there? Should I make the switch? >> I think the regular-- Right away I went, well, okay, what is silica? Where is it used? It's used all over. It's a very common material. >> I had no idea. >> Yeah. >> Talk about your soundtrack. You had an interesting kind of-- It almost had that-- You say you're not an activist, but the music had this kind of folkish lyrics and music. Talk about your soundtrack choices. >> Well, I was in Tomah, actually in Tunnel City. Which is just-- It's close to Tomah. It's a little, tiny place. Unimin is building a 1,200 acre sand mine there. I talked to people who live near that mine. After a couple days I was driving home and I was pretty depressed. I mean, you finish these interviews and these people are being deeply effected. It kind of gets right to your heart. So I was driving home and I thought, what am I going to do for music? I remembered this song that John Prine wrote, I think in the 60's or 70's, called Paradise. It's about strip mining. It's very graphic and describes, you know, what happened to this county. So I thought, God, you know, maybe I can contact John Prine and use that in my film. It's the same thing happening here. Then I thought, no, wait a minute! There are musicians and artists. I keep bumping into them out here in the country. I'm going to see if I can get them to write music for my film. So on my blog and on my Facebook page I put up $100. I said, $100 for the best sand mining song. >> Was there a guy out there, like, finally somebody wants a song about sand mining? >> Well, people have been writing them. >> Yeah. >> People had already been writing them, yes. I didn't get a lot of entries, but I got some really good ones. And that's what I used. >> Did you use an assortment or was it one artist? >> No, it was an assortment of people. In fact, for the contest, I had judges that actually judged, but then part of the deal was then if you entered the contest I had the option of using your music, but I didn't have to use your music. So that's how I got my pallet of music to choose from. >> That's great. You had a lot of people in this movie where I honestly did not know where they were going to come down on which issue. Is this a political issue or it is more of a community issue that is above politics? >> Oh, hum, it's a money issue. >> Yeah. >> This is driven by the energy industry. What we're seeing is that we're on the tail end of all this energy stuff. Energy is big, huge money. That big, huge money, it's operating this by remote control. So the people who are making the ultimate decisions about frac sand mining, they don't live here, most of them. Because of that there are things that happen that aren't so great. You know, you wouldn't do that to your own home town. >> Right. >> But is you live somewhere else you say, well, I want another 5% interest on my investment. See what happens. >> It's a money issue. >> It's a money issue, yeah. And of course that means politics, that means communities, that means everything else, because western Wisconsin needs job. >> Sure. Let's see another clip from "The Price of Sand." >> There are 2500+ non-metallic mining operations in Wisconsin. However, when you go and look for operations that would be comparable to this influx of the frac sand mining, it's almost non-existent. They're oftentimes not operated by people in the mining industry. They are initiated by real estate investors. These are not the typical mining operations that Wisconsin is used to. >> In two years, frac sand mines and processing plants in Wisconsin had increased tenfold. The media buzz was all about new jobs. From what I'd seen already, I thought there might be more to this story. Maybe the media wasn't really listening. Can I ask your opinion? >> On what? >> I'm making a documentary on frac sand mining. I just want to know what people think. >> Let 'er rip. >> Sounds good to me. It produces a lot of jobs. >> I think they better think about the people's land and their crops, and the ground that surrounds what they're wrecking, you know. That's just my personal opinion. >> I've heard about it. Would I want it done on my property? No. >> You know, all these mines, they're doing all this. What really is it doing to our water? >> I really truly don't think that it should be done. >> They can take it somewhere else. >> Why? >> I'm not interested in having it that close to home, ruining property values. We have animals. It's just not good. Everything I've read and heard about it, it's hard on the environment, the ecology, everything. So, no, not for it at all. >> You talked to a lot of people, obviously. Where do they come down? You do a pretty good job of evening things out in your film. Some are for, some against. What would you say about the people? Are there more people that are for this process or against the frac sand mining? >> Pete, I can't honestly say. I think it depends of where you are. I think it depends on circumstance. It's a difficult issue. It really is. I mean, I'd like to say everybody's against it, but that's not true. >> Yeah. >> And there are people that are getting some very positive benefits out of it. It's a deep, complicated issue. >> Aside from jobs, what are those positives? You've seen a lot of this. You've been all over. What are the positive effects of this? >> One of them was explained to me. There was a guy that contacted me through the web, anonymously at first. >> The world wide web? >> Yeah, the world wide web. I'm trying to remember. It was through my web site. He e-mailed me but it was anonymous. He works as a landsman. A landsman goes out and arranges contracts for sand mines. We carried on a little dialogue and then one day I went to meet him. That was kind of, you know, like meeting Deep Throat. But you know, he made a lot of good points. He wouldn't appear on camera. He didn't want to. So he's not in my film, but he was a great source. >> Not even with one of those shadow things? >> Well, we talked about that. I did a couple of interviews with him. I just didn't want him to end up loosing his work. >> Yeah, sure. >> But one of the points he made is that for generations people have paid taxes on their hills. You know, farmers pay taxed on those hills and trees, and they never get any money back out of them. And they're scraping by. Then all of the sudden somebody comes and says, that hill is worth $2 million. Sell it to me and you're troubles are over. You know, okay. Sell it and move. >> So that's a positive thing for that one guy who happens to have a hill on his property. >> But later on in the film you'll see Vicky Trinko, that woman that lives in Cook's Valley, Wisconsin. She's living on her family farm and she'd developed asthma, literally, because the hill across the road from her farm is being mined for silica. I step out of my car there and I'm choking and gagging. >> How is it when they're done mining if the hill is just gone. You have a song called, The Hills Are Gone. >> Um-hum. >> When they're done mining it, the hill just collapses? >> Well, no, they're actually taking-- What they do is they take away the over-burden. This is a mining term. All the stuff on top, they take it and they pile it somewhere, and then they put it back. Every mine has to have a reclamation plan. The mining companies say, we've got this plan and it all been approved, and everything's going to be fine. But maybe not so much. For instance, there's one idea that that land can be used for farming. I talked to a soil microbiologist who's worked on reclaiming land for coal mining for decades. He said, you know, no. You can't farm that. That soil is dead soil at that point. There's lots of misinformation. There's lots of erroneous assumptions. I don't know. >> Yeah. So was your passion for this issue-- I was looking at your background. You've done shorts. You've done industrial films. You jump into the feature film world here. I mean, that's a big step. How does this compare. Did you enjoy this process? Compare it to the other things you've done. >> I like a challenge. I'm a curious person, and I like talking to people. Also, in the beginning, this was definitely for my mom. My mom really-- You know, this issue was going to effect her neighborhood, and I felt, well, I need to do something about it. The media takes the easy path. In the case of sand mining, the early information on it was mostly stuff that had been planted there by the industry. It's just like a political campaign. They hire consultants. They have a strategy. They get the guys that look right and they put them in front of a camera, and they're delivering the message they want to deliver. Well, who's on the other side? Luckily, we have things like YouTube. You know? So if you're passionate about something and you want to make a difference, you can go out and you can make a film. You can stick it up on YouTube and right away you can get an audience. That was my initial thing. Before I started this film I spent six months making YouTube shorts. Only when I'd hit over 10,000 views, at that point I realized, there's enough of an audience here that if I make a feature film my audience will be there. >> That's great. Let's see another clip from "The Price of Sand." Cancer, Silicosis, kidney disease? I could see why mothers with small children were worried. But according to the frac sand industry there's never enough dust to effect neighbors. >> The mine over the hill about a mile and a half north of me started in '09. I didn't notice anything too much, but there was a lot of dust blowing and people were saying something about it at our town meeting, the people that were effected on that side of the bluff. Then last year in 2011 they started a quarter of a mile northwest of me. That's when it started. The dust was blowing. About March/April I noticed my soft palette was swollen. I would lay in bed and I heard this "eee." I thought, what is that? Well, it was me. It was my breathing. Some days I would be coughing a lot, and I never had any cold symptoms. It would be, just start coughing and I had a tightness in my chest. I went out to my cousin's for a week in Pennsylvania and all my symptoms went away. I came back a week later. I wasn't even home a week and the symptoms came back. I went the pulmonary doctor and he listened to my chest and looked at my throat, and he says, you have asthma due to your environment. >> Speaking of asthma from your environment, you spent a lot of time in southern California where the air is not perfect. A lot of people do that. A lot of writers, directors, seem like they spend time out west. I did it myself for 14 years. Then they come back to the Midwest. Do you think geography has anything to do with creativity? Where is Jim Tittle more creative and why? >> That's a difficult question. I think I'm creative when I'm part of a community. And when I can find it, the ways and the means to be creative. If you're working 60 hours a week at a factory it's harder than if you have a flexible schedule. The nice thing about living in the Midwest for me is I can make a reasonable living but I can still find ways to get out and work. It's not sucking up all of my time. There's a decent market for my skills, but there are plenty of resources for filmmakers. >> What took more of your time when you were in southern California? >> I was in graduate school. I was a Fellow at the University of California studying art. >> So you could just focus on that. >> Right, yeah. >> Talk about your overhead shots. You have some great aerial shots in this film. Those are hard to get, especially in an indy film. A lot of times they're so small. But that really opens a film up. How do you get those shots, and how did you do it in your process? >> Well, I-- It's been a few years now ago. I was one of the camera guys, one of the DPs, on a History Channel series called "Monster Quest." "Monster Quest" was about cryptozoology. They flew me around the country and I'd go shoot, you know, a thing on Mothman or Bigfoot or giant snakes. >> Cryptozoology are these-- >> Stuff that science doesn't recognize yet. >> Okay. >> There are a lot of people that believe in Bigfoot but so far science doesn't recognize it. So that's cryptozoology. The point is, you're always trying to find low-budget ways to make your point visually. I did a lot of interesting camera rigs, you know, used special cameras and things. And learned how to do those things cheaply. Those skills really came in handy because I didn't have the money. There were a few cases where I had people helping me shoot interview stuff, but in general I shot the bulk of this myself. With the aerials, I knew from that first visit top that mine in La Sueur, Unimin, I realized,to get something that really shows these mines I've got to get up in the air. I'd already done aerials for other projects, and I knew how hard it was. You can spend, on a helicopter-- A helicopter would have been the gold standard. That's $1,200 an hour. >> Without connections. >> That was-- Yeah, forget that. >> What did you use, like, a little prop plane or something? >> No, well, yes. There's a guy that I met, and his wife is actually now the leader of Save the Bluffs in Goodhue County. Jim owns a plane. He's a pilot. He took me up several times. The problem is, how do you shoot out of the plane? The windshield gets in the way, the wings get in the way. It's really hard to show. >> On an indy film where you've got to do everything. I'm picturing you steering the plane and using the camera. >> Yeah, I have an RC plane that I used for the Mothman episode of "Monster Quest," but again, you know, there are all kinds of rules about that. Somebody's gonna shoot it down in nothing else. There are problems. So what I did is I actually went to Target and I bought a thing called a GoPro. Most filmmakers are familiar with GoPros. They're about $300. I bought a GoPro and I build a rig to bolt to the bottom for Jim's plane. >> Oh, Okay. >> There's a little hole in the belly of his airplane. It's technically an experimental plane because he built it. The hole is for mounting an auxiliary fuel tank. We took the fuel tank off and I made this rig with a giant suction cup which is used for car rigs, and a bolt, and some springs. I hung-- First I put a video camera on there. The footage looked awful. It took us three flights to get it right. >> Wow, even tougher without a fuel tank. >> The other funny thing is that we had to fly low, you know, you wan to fly low. So we're right at the FAA limits. We flew over once. We're flying over these mines in Cook's Valley. I said, Jim, can we make another pass? And he says, uh, I don't think I want to do that. >> You don't have the budget for it. >> No, no! It's because when he used to fly in 'Nam they used to shoot at you when it was that low. It was making him very uncomfortable. >> And on that note, we'll see another clip from "The Price of Sand." >> They're holding this promise out of jobs. I think that's what divides the community. You have a group of people that say we need the jobs, and you have a group of people saying please don't destroy the natural resources that we have here. That puts those two groups at odds with each other. When a member of the board of adjustments say, how many job? He says 30. How many local? Well, I don't know. It's their business model not to give that information out. The faster they can get it in with the less information documented behind it, the easier it is to walk away when it's time to walk away. >> We know that the frac sand business and hydraulic fracturing is an industry that's all over the world, everybody. We've got the best scientists in China and Russia and India, and I think probably the energy business in the US, trying to figure out a way to get cheaper and cheaper proppants. They're going to find that cheaper way, cheaper than frac sand, where they can manufacture proppants nearer the sight of where they're going to be used. This is going to change the whole area of western Wisconsin. Instead of having a lot of mining companies, we'll have a lot of holes in the ground, no jobs. It will all go away. >> Talk about some of these people that you interviewed, you're characters, I'd guess you'd say. That guy has kind of an interesting background story. >> Oh, yeah, yeah. That guy started out as a St. Paul cop. He became an investigator, he was part of an exchange program with Scotland Yard. He then became an attorney. Now he's retired, but he's very active in politics down near Lake Peppin, and has been active in the anti-sand mine movement. He's a fascinating guy. I met everybody from retired-- There was a retired trucker up in Prairie Farm who was extremely helpful. There were farmers that were just great. The landsman that I met-- That's really the great thing about making a documentary in a place like western Wisconsin. The variety of people, and also the willingness. People will talk to you. >> Yeah. >> They will spend time with you, they will talk to you, as long as they feel like they're being respected. >> Sure. >> I got a lot out of making this film. It was a great experience for me. >> We just have about 20 seconds left, but let me ask you. You obviously feel a connection to the people you filmed. Did you feel a connection, as a filmmaker, to the land because of this process? >> I grew up on Twin Bluff Road. As a kid I played on silica bluffs. >> Wow, okay. >> Yeah, my brother and I both-- A very strong connection, yeah. >> Well, you did a great job on the film, Jim. Thanks for being with us today. >> Thanks, Pete. I appreciate it. >> Yeah, you're welcome. And thank you for watching "Director's Cut. For more information on "The Price of Sand" please go to wpt.org and click on "Director's Cut." While you're there send us an e-mail, or find out how you can submit a film. I'm Pete Schwaba, and despite some very deft storytelling, I'm still not entirely sure how fracking works. But we'll see you next time on "Director's Cut." I went walkin' by the river By the Sky-high piles of sand I asked A hard hat wearing man About his dream His master plan Is that just piles of sand? He said, they're Big piles of gold They're going to Feed some mouths Move out of hand Movers of the totem pole He'll even grease some palms If you want to Play some ball In the big leagues With the big boys Smokin' fat cigars Loosen your belt, son. Mmm, got the frac sand blues