OT - Crime Rings Trafficking Sand

[Matt Schoolfield]

Inside the Crime Rings Trafficking Sand: Organized crime is mining sand from rivers and coasts to feed demand worldwide, ruining ecosystems and communities. Can it be stopped?, by David A. Taylor, Scientific American.

More discussion on the hacker news web forum.

[Charlie Goerges]

I knew that sand had gone up multiples in price over the last several years, but I didn't know there was an illegal trade in it now. This is pretty crazy. I wonder how many courses have been capped in illegal sand?

[Matt Schoolfield]

Oops, I just fixed the link to the article that was broken earlier. It's a deep dive, not just a short news blurb.

[Bruce Katona]

Here in the USA, this is rather unlikely - WHY?


If you're moving material around internally on a site you own - have at it!


But - In order to either import or export material to a construction site, there are effectively chain of custody documents that come with soil, sand, clay etc. showing where the material came from, where its going to and lab test results showing the chemical make-up of the material - Why?


1. Environmental Contamination


Taking contaminated material off your site and taking it to another site causes harm & damage to the property owner receiving it - resulting in litigation regarding who is cleaning up and remediating the site where contaminated material was dumped.



2. Cost - It has to be less expensive to import sand from a local supplier than it is to mine it, truck it to a port, load it on a ship, ship it halfway around the world, unload it then take it to the site requiring sand.


Just my $0.02

[Wayne_Kozun]

I knew that sand had gone up multiples in price over the last several years, but I didn't know there was an illegal trade in it now. This is pretty crazy. I wonder how many courses have been capped in illegal sand?

The story is talking about places like Morocco and Kenya - it isn't clear that this is a big deal in the US.

[Matt Schoolfield]

The article is clearly about concrete, but I figured it would be relevant here because of the intense imported sand usage at many golf courses, and how it effects the global price of sand. Bruce brings up a good point, but I still think it's relevant due to the scale of the problem. If organized crime is involved at the level here it certainly seems like documentation could be suspect.

The story is talking about places like Morocco and Kenya - it isn't clear that this is a big deal in the US.

Until a few years ago, a mine north of Monterey, Calif., operated by Cemex, a global construction company, was pulling more than 270,000 cubic meters of sand every year from the beach, operating in a legal gray zone. That was the last beach mine in the U.S., shut down in 2020 by grassroots pressure. Mining in rivers and deltas, however, is still going strong throughout the U.S., not all of it legal.

I would add a personal note from my Introduction to Beaches and Shoreline Processes class back in college (it was an elective but wildly interesting). The professor had multiple photos of golf courses clearly, illegally extracting sand from adjacent beaches he was doing consulting on. I'm a pretty cynical guy, but I would find it entirely unsurprising if many coastal courses think taking a bit of beach or riverbed sand is "no big deal."

[Wayne_Kozun]

Is the sand actually imported from overseas?  I thought that they would just use whatever the local sand is for stuff like capping.  And isn't Ohio sand preferred for bunkers, in addition to engineered sand like Pro/Angle.

[Matt Schoolfield]

Is the sand actually imported from overseas?

After a bit of research, it looks like the US is still the leading sand exporter, so we're probably not importing sand from overseas:

Despite increased consumption of sand, the United States is still the world’s top exporter, responsible for nearly 30 percent of the world’s natural sand exports in 2018. Top destinations for U.S. sand exports include Canada, China, Japan and Mexico.

Source: Global Trade

[Tom_Doak]

I knew that sand had gone up multiples in price over the last several years, but I didn't know there was an illegal trade in it now. This is pretty crazy. I wonder how many courses have been capped in illegal sand?

The story is talking about places like Morocco and Kenya - it isn't clear that this is a big deal in the US.

I guess Morocco and Kenya sound like better examples than Mexico and the Dominican Republic?


I am not sure this is a “sand” topic as much as it’s a trucking topic, but courses built in the third world are at the mercy of suppliers for everything from sand to pipe to sprinklers.  Not something an architect wants to get in the middle of, but it’s one of the reasons it’s so hard to do great work in overseas locations.

[Adam Lawrence]

Here's an article I wrote in GCA a couple of years ago about the global sand crisis and its potential effect on golf. Was very pleased with it -- it's nice to do real journalism once in a while. 

I was also extremely pleased with my headline until Marty Bonner picked me up on my rotten Scots...

https://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/digital/magazine/issue66/48/

[Thomas Dai]

Supply and demand. When there's 8 billion people in the World there's a lot of infrastructure, houses etc needing to be built and maintained. And likely higher priorities for most than bunkers and top-dressing.
atb

[Marty Bonnar]

Here's an article I wrote in GCA a couple of years ago about the global sand crisis and its potential effect on golf. Was very pleased with it -- it's nice to do real journalism once in a while. 

I was also extremely pleased with my headline until Marty Bonner picked me up on my rotten Scots...

https://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/digital/magazine/issue66/48/

And your even more rotten spelling of my surname!
 
F.

[Wayne_Kozun]

Here's an article I wrote in GCA a couple of years ago about the global sand crisis and its potential effect on golf. Was very pleased with it -- it's nice to do real journalism once in a while. 

I was also extremely pleased with my headline until Marty Bonner picked me up on my rotten Scots...

https://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/digital/magazine/issue66/48/

And your even more rotten spelling of my surname!
 
F.

At least it had two nn's with the e!

[Pete_Pittock]

Millions of tons of sand are used for hydraulic fracking in the petroleum in the US   

[Cal Carlisle]

Wasn't Noho Hank trying to become the kingpin of illegally trafficked sand in Los Angeles? That didn't end well for him.

[Kalen Braley]

Wasn't Noho Hank trying to become the kingpin of illegally trafficked sand in Los Angeles? That didn't end well for him.

Cal this is exactly what I thought of, but not sure how many Barry fans we have on GCA!