Overview of permits required to operate a frac-sand mine.

Resources to learn more.

There’s a new wrinkle in Wisconsin’s fast-growing frac sand mining: It turns out that an endangered butterfly, the Karner blue, lives in the same region. And some companies may be failing to check for the butterfly as they move ahead with mining operations.

Over the past six months, Gogebic Taconite LLC spent $114,883 lobbying state officials in support of its proposal to open an iron ore mine in northern Wisconsin. State Sen. Bob Jauch, D-Poplar, who represents the district where the mine would be located, says this was “a complete waste of money.”

This western Wisconsin community is in the midst of a land rush — call it a sand rush — fueled by exploding nationwide demand for fine silica sand used in hydraulic fracturing of oil and natural gas. At least 16 frac sand mines and processing facilities are operating, and an additional 25 sites are proposed, in a diagonal swath stretching across 15 Wisconsin counties from Burnett to Columbia, the Center has found.

A state program helped Didion Milling win $5.6 million in stimulus funding to expand its Cambria milling and ethanol plant, which has a history of environmental violations.

Millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater and thousands of gallons of gooey black coal tar lie underneath Ashland’s downtown waterfront. It is by far the thorniest cleanup of an old manufactured gas plant in Wisconsin — both because of the difficulty in cleaning it up, and in finding someone to pay for it.

National health rankings report that large numbers of people in Wisconsin are exposed to contaminated drinking water.