ManitobaAlberta mining company Sio Silica held an open house in Winnipeg on Monday night as part of its second effort to obtain a licence to bore for sand below the surface of southeastern Manitoba.Unrelated company Silex Resource also proposes silica mining in RM of MacdonaldBartley Kives · CBC News · Posted: Nov 24, 2025 10:31 PM EST | Last Updated: 2 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 5 minutesThe audio version of this article is generated by text-to-speech, a technology based on artificial intelligence.Mining company Sio Silica, which has filed a second application for an environmental licence, held an open house at Club Regent Casino Hotel on Monday. (Bartley Kives/CBC)Alberta mining company Sio Silica held an open house in Winnipeg on Monday night as part of its second effort to obtain a licence to bore for sand below the surface of southeastern Manitoba.Several dozen people filed into a Club Regent Casino Hotel conference room where Sio Silica placed informational boards and had their consultants present to answer questions.Sio Silica staff asked people entering the conference room to state whether they support or oppose the mining proposal, which faced vocal opposition in the R.M. of Springfield when the mining company initially pursued an environmental license.In 2024, the NDP government rejected Sio Silica’s request for a licence to extract sand from the sandstone aquifer that sits below the R.M. of Springfield, citing concerns about the potential effects on drinking-water quality as well as the potential for subsurface collapses.In a renewed effort to obtain a licence, filed earlier this year, Sio Silica proposed to drill fewer wells, proceed more gradually and extract less sand.Outside the open house, Oakbank, Man. resident Darryl Speer said the new proposal doesn’t address concerns that the mining process would allow drinking water in the sandstone aquifer to mix with less potable water in a limestone aquifer located closer to the surface.”The initial application was indicating that there was going to be thousands of wells drilled, impacting these two aquifers. Now it’s been scaled back, but we still have the same problem: these aquifers are going to intermix,” Speer said.He also expressed concerns about the potential for land to collapse and efforts by three members of the former Progressive Conservative government to push approval of the mining proposal through after the PCs lost power to the NDP in the 2023 provincial election.Inside the open house, some Sio Silica supporters carried signs extolling the potential of the mining proposal to create more jobs. Others wore stickers indicating their support for the company.John Sparrow, a Winnipeg entrepreneur who runs a mobile vehicle-maintenance company called Go Oil Canada, said he’s in favour of the mining proposal because the provincial economy could use a boost.Sparrow, whose business operates in both Canada and the U.S., said he sees more development in other jurisdictions.”We need to develop our resources here. I don’t like being from a deficit province. I feel horrible going to Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario and those taxpayers are funding our stuff here,” he said.Sio Silica president Carla Devlin said the company may hold another open house where people may have the opportunity to speak.New mining company plans to drill test wellsAs Sio Silica makes its case to southern Manitoba residents, another mining company is preparing to drill test wells for silica sand on the other side of the Red River Valley.Silex Resource Company, which is based in Manitoba but run by a pair of Alberta mining industry veterans, plans to drill boreholes southwest of Winnipeg, in the R.M. of Macdonald, to assess the quality of the sand within its mineral claims.“There’s a lot of silica sand down there and it could provide decades of borehole mining,” said Donovan Toews, a principal at Winnipeg Landmark Planning & Design, which handles public consultations on behalf of Silex.The sand below the R.M. of Macdonald is located deeper than similar deposits below the R.M. of Springfield, where Sio Silica has drilled test wells, according to a Landmark presentation prepared for an open house slated for Wednesday.Silex Resource Company has mineral claims in the R.M. of Macdonald, southwest of Winnipeg (Landmark Planning & Design)Toews said Silex intends to drill fewer holes in Macdonald than Sio plans to drill in Springfield. But the plan in Macdonald is to extract more sand from each well, first by drilling vertical boreholes and then mining horizontally, Toews said.“They know it’s good silica because all indications are from other research that it is. They just need to know the exact purity,” Toews said.“All they need to do at this first stage is go and get samples and that would be three or four boreholes.”Toews said there is less concern about the effects of drilling on water quality because the aquifer on the west side of the Red River is too saline to be used for drinking water. Toews said he does not believe there are concerns that water could contaminate soil at the surface, adding the project remains in its early stages. Silex does not plan to pursue an environmental licence until it knows the quality of the sand deposits.
Sio Silica holds open house amid 2nd effort to get sand-mining licence in RM of Springfield
