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From: John Evans
St. Charles, Minn.
I grew up in St. Charles, graduated and eventually had a business here. Some years later, I moved on with my career and now I came back home to retire. (Seems to be a trend of this with people.) With my family here it seemed like the thing to do - a nice town!
The city utility rates are now 3X what they were not long ago when I came back; also talk of the frac sand coming makes me uncertain if I will stay. Our city had big problems before the frac sand showed up. With the current problems and then if the frac sand takes over it would be unbearable to live here anymore.
Many people say they will move. The frac sand pushers tell us how much our town is going to grow! I think I will listen to the community people - not the sand pushers that have no intentions of living anywhere near here. For example, Maiden Rock with all the frac sand activity there, on the last count the total sand employees living in the town were ZERO. Contrary to what they are telling us, I would expect the same here.
When I read articles in the paper and see how arrogant and rude these people are to our community residents and act like they are already running our town it makes me try to imagine what it would be like if they were here with that attitude and monster of a sand plant running - don’t forget their lawyers all over everything. With 67% of our people driving to jobs in other towns and a large part of them in the health field, the frac sand is about as popular here as the silicosis, bad water, and high chance of getting run over by a truck that it brings with it. I do not think that sand pushers realize what they have here for an organization against them in the community. Think about it - they are still trying to sell this idea to us. This is when they are being nice yet!!! Just wait! It is starting to look this this mayor Bill Spitzer stands alone with his strong support for the frac sand plant with the high majority of the community not wanting it. I wonder if he thinks he knows more than all the community combined? Another very vocal backer for the sand is this administrator Nick Koverman. After that the list gets thin. My bet is on the people.
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