A frac sand crash in St. Charles splits investors

Minnesotans Rick Frick and Mike Murphy are picking up the pieces of a failed initiative to build a major frac sand facility in St. Charles. They'll go elsewhere for a rail site and they vow to mine sand.

March 14, 2013 at 4:33PM
(The Minnesota Star Tribune)
(The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The collapse of a major frac sand proposal in Winona County has caused a split among investors in the project, with one faction pulling out in frustration over Minnesota's anti-frac sand sentiment. "Me and my partners split up. They went to Wisconsin," said Rick Frick, one of two remaining principals in Minnesota Proppant LLC. "Were they fed up? Yes, that had a lot to do with it."

Click here to see the whole story at startribune.com

about the writer

about the writer

Tony Kennedy

Reporter

Tony Kennedy is an outdoors writer covering Minnesota news about fishing, hunting, wildlife, conservation, BWCA, natural resource management, public land, forests and water.

See Moreicon

More from Minnesota Star Tribune

See More
card image
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, ASSOCIATED PRESS/The Minnesota Star Tribune

The "winners" have all been Turkeys, no matter the honor's name.

In this photo taken Monday, March 6, 2017, in San Francisco, released confidential files by The University of California of a sexual misconduct case, like this one against UC Santa Cruz Latin Studies professor Hector Perla is shown. Perla was accused of raping a student during a wine-tasting outing in June 2015. Some of the files are so heavily redacted that on many pages no words are visible. Perla is one of 113 UC employees found to have violated the system's sexual misconduct policies in rece