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Sand and its larger cousin, gravel, are better known in the industrial realm as “aggregate,” the key ingredients in concrete, asphalt and glass used in everything from highways to skyscrapers.

The demand for construction aggregates will rise 5.2 per cent annually to 51.7 billion tons in 2019, according to researcher Freedonia Group. Some estimate sand’s share of the aggregate business is already worth US$70 billion in annual sales.

A 2014 United Nations Environment Programme report, Sand, Rarer Than One Thinks, determined that sand and gravel mining accounts for as much as 85 per cent of all mining activity in the world and concluded that the depletion rate of sand is rapidly exceeding its natural renewal rate worldwide.

As a result, some Canadian sand companies are booming due to an increase in demand for oilsands fracking and exports to markets that have already depleted their supplies.

At the same time, industry players in some areas such as Greater Toronto Area (GTA) are warning about a shortage of the construction staple not because of demand-driven depletion, but because of local opposition to getting it out of the ground.

Decades of rapid urbanization and suburbanization in the GTA have put residents ever closer and closer to sand and gravel quarries and pits that once seemed relegated to the rural outskirts.

Residents associations have banded together to try to stop new quarries and pits from being built on the edge of their backyards. They’re worried about air and noise pollution as much as the effect on their property values.