I thought they were joking

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A friend of mine worked at a sand plant in west Texas. He said they used lots of sand but I never really ask what they did with it. Now I'm wondering again.
Used to be a bottle manufacturer there but I do not remember if it was Ball or Mason.
 
No worries, up in northern Alberta they are cleaning the oil out of huge quantities of sand from what was the worlds largest oil spill that happened millions of years ago.
 
As stated.....sand is needed to make concrete but it has to be sand from lakes, oceans etc. Desert sand won't work for concrete it has been tumbled too much by being blown around by the wind. Thats my understanding anyway.
Beach/sea sand is also too rounded and doesn't have the compressibility that river sand does. Irregular shapes always work better for construction purposes compared to round shapes. (ever made a driveway or foot path out of pea gravel? It's not nearly as stable and compressed as crushed limestone.)

Salt content is another issue. Salt attracts moisture which is not an attractive issue for construction concrete.

 
No shortage of active and depleted sand pits near me. They do eventually fill in somewhat but I've not heard of or seen one that was mandated to be put back in the condition it was before the extrication began.
They make an awful mess of the land, but I guess they are a necessary evil. sandpit1.jpg

Most of the light colored stuff is shallow 3-10' deep water over the sand.
sandpit2.jpg

It looks even worse from the roadside view.
 
No shortage of active and depleted sand pits near me. They do eventually fill in somewhat but I've not heard of or seen one that was mandated to be put back in the condition it was before the extrication began.
They make an awful mess of the land, but I guess they are a necessary evil. View attachment 4428

Most of the light colored stuff is shallow 3-10' deep water over the sand.
View attachment 4429

It looks even worse from the roadside view.
Someone needs to say thanks for the on the ground reporting, so here it is. Those holes eventually spring to life?
 
Those holes eventually spring to life?
For fishing and waterfowl? Yes. It takes years for them to clear up tho. Lots of silt and clays above and below the coarse sand.
A few are bought up and turned into RV parks after they have settled a few years but most of the pits just aren't very accessible.

Another one about 3 'as the crow flies' miles south of the others I pictured. You can see it's full of campers, mostly construction workers from the nearby interstate construction. Old picture. It was wiped out by hurricane Harvey in 2017 and has just now begun to grow grass and shrubs on it again. The nice looking smaller pond above and right of the parking area was cleared up by a sprinkler system and big filter setup. The rest of the pits are murky as heck.
sandpit3.jpg
 

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