BEIJING: The China Coast Guard (CCG) in east China’s Fujian Province has busted a major case involving the illegal mining of sea sand and arrested 59 suspects.
An initial probe revealed that the case involves more than 75 million tonnes of sea sand worth more than 5 billion yuan (over 765 million U.S. dollars), CCG sources said here.
The coast guard, in close cooperation with local police, spent more than six months investigating the case and confiscated seven vessels and about 35,000 tonnes of sea sand.
Further investigation is underway. Sea sand is an important marine resource, the loss of which will harm the country’s coastal zones and its marine geology.
Sand mining is the extraction of sand, mainly through an open pit (or sand pit) but sometimes mined from beaches and inland dunes or dredged from ocean and river beds.
Sand is often used in manufacturing, for example as an abrasive or in concrete. It is also used on icy and snowy roads usually mixed with salt, to lower the melting point temperature, on the road surface. Sand can replace eroded coastline.
Some uses require higher purity than others; for example sand used in concrete must be free of seashell fragments.
Sand mining presents opportunities to extract retile, limonite and zircon, which contain the industrially useful elements titanium and zirconium. Besides these minerals, beach sand may also contain garnet, leucoxene, sillimanite and monazite. – Agencies
