The comment period for Illinois' draft fracking regulation is over but there's more must-see video and text from the public hearings I haven't posted yet.
Brent Ritzel is in one of the videos on my last Huffington Post blog. He ran out of time before finishing his full comment so I asked him to send me his notes which are posted below.
The Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and the Illinois State Geological Survey have long seen promoting extraction industries as part of their mission. ISGS is involved in carbon sequestration projects to show it's viable. Just to be clear, they're not engaging in unbiased research to determine whether or not carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants is economically realistic and safe for the public. They're granted funding to work with corporate partners on projects with the predetermined outcome to show it's viable. That part of their work is why they participated in public hearings over the failed coal carbon capture and sequestration plant proposed in Taylorville.
Now, they're taking the same approach with fracking by giving industry talking points the credibility of a state agency the public would expect to be unbiased. Brent does a good job of holding ISGS accountable for misleading the public. He references his study "Fracking Industrialization & Induced Earthquakes" that you can read here. Here's his comment to IDNR:
Thank you very much for your time. I do NOT envy y’all. You have been given the impossible task of regulating a technology that has already been exempted from 7 different major and essential environmental and public health protection laws…
Clean Water Act,
Safe Drinking Water Act,
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,
Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
National Environmental Policy Act
Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.
The Superfund Law
Fracking was obviously never really supposed to be regulated, but it seems to me that if you were tasked with such a project, the FIRST STEP would be put all those protections back in that the Halliburton Loophole removed.
A couple of weeks ago completed a research study entitled “Fracking Industrialization and Induced Earthquakes,” which took a comprehensive look at more than fifty years of studies regarding the known connection between disposal of wastewater in deep-injection wells and induced earthquakes.
What propelled me into researching and writing “Fracking Industrialization and Induced Earthquakes” was my attendance at the July 18, 2013 Fracking Conference at Rend Lake College, which was sponsored by Illinois DCEO, and witnessing a presentation by Robert Bauer of the Illinois State Geological Survey. For the event the presentation had the straightforward title “Hydraulic Fracturing, Horizontal Wells & Unconventional Oil/Gas Resources,” however in its YouTube treatment it was given the title “Are Environmentalists’s [sic] Concerns Over Fracking Valid?”
Now instead of addressing the real and substantive concern of damaging wastewater induced earthquakes as large as magnitude 5.7, Bauer tells the audience that fracking process does not induce felt earthquakes.
Bauer Completely avoided the fact that Fracking Wastewater Disposal has led to 6 to 9-fold increase in felt earthquakes in Midcontinent region,
WHILE mocking any concern over earthquakes as fracking only creates earthquakes that are the equivalent to the force of an apple hitting the ground from a 3-foot drop.
In reality, what seismologists and geophysicists have learned is the following…
Midcontinent 3.0+ earthquakes:
1970-2000: 21 /yr
2001-2008: 29 /yr
2009: 50
2010: 87
2011: 134-188
But they’ve known about this phenomena, and the mechanisms underlying it, since 1966…
Another one of Bauer’s Slides Reads: “Induced Seismicity Potential in Energy Technologies - National Research Council report 2012: Current process of hydraulic fracturing a well does not pose a high risk for inducing FELT seismic events…”
Bauer got this quote from page 85 of the 265 page report. Just three pages later, starting on page 88, is an in-depth analysis of felt earthquakes induced by fracking wastewater disposal in injection wells.
The problem here, once again, is that we have Government pretending right along with industry that there is not a single negative consequence of fracking industrialization…
What are we supposed to do when our government misinforms us, misleads us, so that we are less equipped to protect ourselves from obvious risks to public health and safety?
The level of mass industrialization of rural American due to fracking is truly unprecedented in American history. Regulating fracking is an absurd notion, and that has been demonstrated by the practice of other states, due to both staffing issues and the lethargic enforcement activity of states. While Texas had over 13,000 wells drilled in 2012, oil & gas companies were caught in 55,000 violations of state fracking laws, with only 2% of those violations actually being enforced.
The only way extraction industries exist at all is by leveraging risk. Corporations much prefer leveraging the risk of others, rather than taking that risk on themselves. That is standard operating procedure for extraction companies like oil & gas, because their real and actual costs of doing business is always far greater than any revenues that can be generated from such activities.
EXAMPLE OF COAL:
Harvard Medical School Study
State of Illinois’s deal with coal
However, they are open for business if they can find someone to take on that risk for them. This is where the government comes in and provides them with the perfect solution: we won’t make you clean up after yourselves, and you pass those exorbitant costs onto the unsuspecting public in the form of degradation of their environment and compromising their personal health.
We are not just merely the collateral damage of the toxin-laden extraction processes of fossil fuel industries, we are THE COLLATERAL ITSELF that allows this transaction to take place between the state and the industry.
We are human bargaining chips, and our value to the industry is in our declining health, our increasing hospital bills, our rising insurance premiums, and of funerals for the most vulnerable among us. As long as the oil & gas industry does not have to clean up after itself, those are the costs that we, THE PEOPLE, will be paying.
The strongest regulations would result in none of us dying from fracking, and the only way to achieve that end is to ban fracking, which is not only the only rational choice to make, but it is also the only constitutional and moral choice to make. Let us never forget that Article XI of the Illinois Constitution guarantees our “right to a healthful environment for the benefit of this and future generations.” That would make fracking an epic fail.
The video of Brent posted by Christopher Oliver:
I don't have video of Tabitha Tripp at the hearing but her inspiring comment is essential reading if you weren't there.
I live another 45 minutes south of here. When I took the time to drive all the way to Springfield last spring, to talk to legislators (who were always too busy to make time to talk,) it was a long trip and I am dedicated to protecting our communities.
I have been in this campaign to stop fracking for 22 months working with SAFE, IPA, Heartwood Forest Council, Vineyard Indian Settlement, RACE and the Shawnee Chapter of the IL Sierra Club.
You have seen me at each one of the hearings. Why? Because it is that important to us down here. It’s not enough to get a news report- we want to know exactly what happened.
Activist Don West says, “The abuse of the land has always gone hand in hand with the abuse of the people, It’s easy to take and frack or mine someone’s land if we have convinced the world- through news--that it’s inhabitants are disposable, poor white trash or in essence a Bunch of hillbillies”
I am native of southern Illinois, I am a graduate of SIU. I am a mother and a poet and we live on a 5th generation family farm with a deep well for water. I live in the boonies and often I don’t even have internet.
But that does not make us expendable to Oil and Gas industry. I might be a hillbilly, but I am proud of it.
It does not make us any less significant. This department and the state have done exactly that- deemed us disposable.
Sacrifice Zones have been determined throughout Southern IL as economically depressed and in need of stimulation via fracked wells and hydrocarbon extraction. Leaving us with ruined water, worthless land and health effects as far as the eye can see into the future, we will be no better off than when we started extraction technology 200+ years ago.
Not the stimulation my children were hoping for!
Officials and agencies entrusted to protect public health and the environment, have gutted laws and created industry loopholes. You’ve sold us out, just like our legislators did.
These rules do NOTHING to uphold the already lax safety guarantees set forth in Public Act 98-0022. That LAW states Section 1-75.2 All phases of HVHF shall be conducted in a manner that shall not pose a significant risk to public health, life, property, aquatic life or wildlife. There is NO part of regulation that will successfully allow safe fracking.
At the very least- if I am going to be reading the rules again, comparing them to the law passed in May and then substantiating my comments to prove the incompetency of these rules during this joyous holiday season, then the least I could do is bring you a partial list of scientific research as a my gift to you.
This compilation of papers includes:
-Radioactivity in Shale Deposits
USGS maps 100 year flood plain and Liquefaction maps due to Earthquakes
Several research papers on Fracking induced Seismicity
OSHA regulations on Exposure to Silica Dust and Toxic Chemicals
American Journal of Nursing Research on Fracking and Public Health
Research on Waterless Fracking
Peer Reviewed Publication Research on Air Quality near Fracking operations
FWW: The New Global Water Crisis and water demands and Climate Change scenarios
NRDC’s research on disposal of radioactive liquified oil field waste
By light of the yule log, I will be reading the ACLU guide on civil liberties to my children, because I am pretty sure at this point, the only way to maintain our right to a healthy environment, Article XI of the Illinois constitution, will be to defend those rights by force against our government and the corporations who have hijacked our democracy.
Quoting Don West: “In a hungry world the struggle between oppressor and oppressed is unending. The inevitable question “which side are you on?” To be content with things as they are, to be “neutral” is to take side with the oppressor who wants to keep status quo. To challenge the power of the oppression is the poet’s responsibility. Such action will preserve and build faith and hope in humanity. Nothing-NOTHING raises the spirit of the people more.”
Both comments show they understand the political dynamics of Illinois that causes them to be viewed as expendable people and collateral damage. Their own state legislators are taking six figures in campaign contributions from the industry and their actions reflect it. Too many Chicago legislators who normally protect the environment find it easy to shrug their shoulders and accept a little more damage to southern Illinois because the region has always suffered the consequences of energy consumption. Hillbillies are easy subjects for compromise.
But, the dynamics are rapidly changing. Too many people are drawing a line against fracking.