Illinois Democrats Sell Out to Big Oil and Gas

CARBONDALE, IL — Horizontal hydraulic fracturing will now be allowed in Illinois as the much touted regulatory bill passed the legislature. This is despite the tireless efforts of health and community opposition groups such as S.A.F.E., Illinois Peoples Action, the testimony of Dr. Sandra Steingraber, and the challenge to Governor Quinn-D by Josh Fox (Gasland and Gasland II) to visit Pennsylvania frack sites and talk to those harmed by the process.
The regulatory bill was drafted with representatives of labor, industry, and national environmental groups. Because of the inclusion of the latter who benefitted from corporate money, people are being misled.
According to Dr. Steingraber, an Illinois native and Distinguished Scholar in Residence in the Department of Environmental Studies and Science at Ithaca College, “The fracking emperor has no clothes. The regulatory bill was drafted, under the guidance of Illinois Attorney General (Lisa Madigan-D,) behind closed doors with no public hearings, no public comment period, no input from scientists or physicians or public health officials, without environmental studies or a health impact assessment. These rules are arbitrary compromises based on negotiations with industry. They guarantee neither public health nor environmental integrity.”
After eighteen months of attempting to gain an audience with Governor Quinn, Tabitha Tripp and Dayna Conner of Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment, were granted an 11th hour meeting with an aide to the governor. “(He) confirmed there is no contingency plan for our children or their health and well being down the road in the land of Lincoln,” Tripp said. “When the jobs don’t pan out and the water is toxic, we will have traded away our children’s future for fossil fuels.”
Because Illinois Democrats have touted this as a jobs bill, labor groups have embraced it. As S.A.F.E member Richard Fedder points out, the Chamber of Commerce estimates 1,000-47,000 jobs will be created, however, empirical evidence from states such as Pennsylvania and West Virginia actually show few jobs created and many more lost. Both states have high unemployment and suffer from environmental destruction.
As the Koch funded organization, Americans for Prosperity, continue to show their pro-industry propaganda film “Fracknation” to local communities facing the fracking nightmare, opposition groups are regrouping and strategizing. As Dr. Steingraber declared, “The anti-fracking movement is growing into a nationwide citizen uprising. We will be escalating our actions in Illinois (with) plans for statewide education and outreach campaigns. We will remember and call out those who dismiss the moratorium bill as a pretty guest towel. It is not something to admire and walk away from. It is a basic human right.”
The Illinois legislature also passed a water privatization bill, which, like fracking, is part and parcel of the move to privatize all public resources for the private gain of the 1%. Educating local communities is the urgent task now. We need to call for the nationalization of energy, water and the land in the interests of the people, not the corporations. We need a government that guarantees we have a society free from exploitation and environmental destruction; a government that is truly of, by, and for the people.