I'm looking at registration forms submitted to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources by companies that want to frack Illinois.
One company with a notorious environmental record was able to check the box saying it has no history of violations because the form only asks if they had a violation on fracking in the past five years. Have a violation for conventional oil & gas operations? No problem. You've only been operating in Texas where almost no one gets held accountable? No problem.
It's another part of the Illinois fracking law that sounds good but is basically worthless in practice. As a friend wrote; it would be like one of us having a regular driver's license, getting multiple DUIs and speeding tickets, and then deciding we wanted to get a CDL (commercial drivers license). Without having a search on our previous driving record, without having to take a new test, and only having to pay a license fee. Then if we got caught again, all we would have to do is change our name, and we could start with a clean slate all over again.
This reminds me of the Chicago-based green groups who negotiated the fracking law proudly bragging about the supposed victory they won allowing cities to ban it. Yet, the likely impacted areas are mostly rural counties where banning within city limits is no meaningful barrier to frackers. Countywide bans, which would have a meaningful impact, aren't allowed.
On another topic, the fracking registration forms say no permits will be issued until the rules are finally approved. A few groups who are focused on crafting better regulation made a campaign around getting Quinn to not issue fracking permits until the rules are final. Apparently, Quinn's IDNR never considered anything else. That campaign appears to have been a chew toy that kept groups occupied in a way that doesn't challenge Quinn or change the politics around fracking.