Frac Sand Mining Has Led To A Tangle Of Annexations In Western Wisconsin

Town officials in Trempealeau County say a growing number of frac sand mine annexations is creating a confusing and chaotic patchwork of city boundaries reaching deep into the countryside.

There’s a circle of small cities in the heart of Trempealeau County: Independence, Whitehall, Blair and Arcadia. In the last few years, these western Wisconsin cities have been growing, but that growth doesn’t have anything to do with population. Instead, they’ve stretched their boundaries, sometimes with miles-long skinny strips, to reach industrial frac sand mines. There have been seven frac sand annexations in the area, each one taking land and tax base from local towns. However, town of Lincoln Board Chair Jack Speerstra said that isn’t the worst part.

“It’s chaotic having boundaries all over the place. You’ll drive from a town road to a city street back to a town road all within a quarter of a mile,” Speerstra said. “It’s kind of difficult for addressing for 911 for example, difficult for the tax lister to really understand where he’s at with who’s paying taxes where, where’s your voting districts.”

The reason these cities are going out of their way to annex frac sand mines is simple: money. Companies like Hi-Crush Proppants, Superior Silica Sands and Preferred Sands have promised millions in order to get more favorable regulations than Trempealeau County’s mining ordinance. County Land Management Director Kevin Lein calls it pay-to-play and said the annexations are stretching the limits of the law.

“Each one of these, when you look at them at face value, you would never imagine they would get off the ground. But they have and I don’t know where the limitations would be,” Lein said. “One would think at some point it’s unfeasible, but when you get beyond a mile and a half out and still make that happen I don’t know at what point it’s unfeasible.”

But what makes an annexation legal or illegal is largely up to interpretation. According to state law, annexations must be contiguous, but there isn’t a legal definition of what that means. Instead, the courts have a test for cities called the “rule of reason.” It states annexations cannot be arbitrary, and that there has to be a need for the city to annex and for the property to be annexed. But what arbitrary means depends on whom you ask.

A lawsuit in Trempealeau County Circuit Court is testing the rule right now. The towns of Lincoln and Burnside sued the City of Independence for annexing a thin strip of land through their towns to get at a proposed frac sand mine more than a mile and half away from the city.

But Wisconsin Towns Association Executive Director Mike Koles said defining the state’s annexation law shouldn’t be left to expensive lawsuits towns can’t afford. Instead, he said, state lawmakers should step up.

“We want to start to define in the statutes what exactly contiguous means, and really codify that rule of reason in statutes so we don’t have these lawsuits that are necessary in cities and villages,” said Koles.

And until the law is defined, Koles said the annexations in Trempealeau County are setting a dangerous precedent and causing residents to lose their voice in how frac sand mines are regulated.

“I think this is really anti-democratic, anti-representative democracy and quite frankly — and it sounds a little out there — anti-American,” he said. “We have residents in towns and counties that have no ability to elect the city aldermen or village trustees, and yet they are the people who are making recommendations and decisions in these people’s backyards.”

Democratic State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout of Alma is working with Republican colleagues on a bill that would clarify the state’s annexation law. It has yet to be introduced in the Legislature and it’s unclear whether it would make it to the governor’s desk.