It’s a thing. Criminals do what is most profitable and the rest be damned. I found the charts showing how it’s stacked up against other traditional forms of organized crime. Very interesting.

There’s a project proposed in Manitoba that would use 7,700 wells to suck up sand from 50 m below ground.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/springfield-silica-referendum-results-1.6971774

Actually read a bit on this their project environmental assessment is online I think and I dug into it. The reason that they are going after the sand is because It’s highly uniform and it’s composition and therefore valuable for its engineering properties