Illinois People’s Action ■ 510 E. Washington Street, Suite 309 ■ Bloomington, IL 61701 ■(309) 827-9627 www.illinoispeoplesaction.org For Release: immediate 2/21/13 Contacts: Bill Rau, IPA Spokesperson. Quotes. Phone: (309) 662-1605 Dawn Dannenbring, IPA Staff Organizer on Fracking. Background. Phone 827-9627
PRESS RELEASE
ILLINOIS PEOPLE’S ACTION SAYS GOVERNOR QUINN WRONG ON FRACKING BILL.
Illinois People’s Action says that Governor Quinn is wrong on the new fracking bill introduced into the Illinois House yesterday by Representative John Bradley. The bill, which was crafted behind closed doors for many months without community input, pushed by Speaker of the House, Mike Madigan, who is hoping fracking will bring a revenue stream to Illinois. IPA leader, Bill Rau, says, “On the most important issues, the bill remains silent or gives the store away.” This includes: the right to frack within 301 feet of lakes, like Lake Bloomington, Peoria Lake, Lake Springfield, or Lake Decatur, or 501 feet of your water well (best practice is 3,300 feet or 1 km); unlimited venting of raw methane during well completion — runaway climate change, here we come; no minimum vertical separation distance, i.e., the distance between groundwater and the top of the shale strata — which is crucial in the shallow New Albany Formation; no testing of radioactivity in produced water, along with the right to flush radioactivity down Class II injection wells, which is presently prohibited under Illinois law; the right to “temporarily” use open pit ponds to store flowback water; the right to frack within 501 feet of residences, churches, schools, etc. no ban on fracking in seismically active areas; and no provisions about those thousands of inactive or MIA oil wells that aren’t located on plat maps — these are “fast paths” for polluting groundwater removal of local control from counties with regard to the permitting process. Fracking permits will be issued by IDNR; counties can formally object to a permit but the bill doesn’t specify how the objections will be handled. “The gas industry got just about everything they wanted,” said Rau. “Please, everyone: label this monstrosity properly. It’s a DE-regulation bill.”