The environmental coalition – led in downstate Illinois by Illinois People’s Action (IPA) and Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment (SAFE) – got a shot in the arm on May 20th when Josh Fox kicked off his national tour of Gasland Part II in Normal, Illinois.

In attendance – at both the film screening and a prior press conference – were Gasland director Josh Fox, Sandra Steingraber, renowned environmental biologist and central Illinois native, and Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network. Below are portions of their speeches, given during the IPA press conference, which together provide the movement’s reasons to oppose the proposed legislation that claims without basis to make fracking safe.

IPA Press Conference

Video

Josh Fox

Sandra Steingraber

Carolyn Raffensperger

Photos

Carolyn Raffensperger, Sandra Steingraber, Josh Fox, and Barbara Heyl speak against fracking at the IPA press conference, May 20th, 2013.

Sandra Steingraber addresses the media.

That evening, the national public premiere of Gaslands Part II took place at the Normal Theater, which was soon filled to its 400-person capacity.

[For an excellent synopsis of the film, which focuses on issues of political power in the fight against fracking, see Steve Horn's piece at the DeSmogBlog.]

A line forms early outside the Normal Theater to see the premiere of Gasland Part II.

People from throughout the Midwest filled the Normal Theater to see Gasland Part II and discuss its significance for Illinois with Josh Fox, Sandra Steingraber and movement leaders.

Immediately following the film showing, director Josh Fox and Illinois People’s Action led a discussion of the gas industry push to bring fracking to Illinois and how citizens can fight back.

The post-film discussion included a lively back-and-forth between the audience and key leaders of the national anti-fracking movement. Below are some snippets of the discussion.

Normal Theater Question-and-Answer (VIDEO)

Citizens Speak Out Against Fracking: Illinois and Arkansas

Josh Fox Addresses the Stance of Big Environmental Organizations in Illinois

Josh Fox Plays the Banjo

Josh Fox and Annette McMichael mingle outside with the crowd amassing to see the film.

During the discussion, attendees were asked to attend a House committee hearing in Springfield the following day, on May 21st, and oppose the committee’s approval of fracking legislation for consideration in the House and Senate. Josh Fox also encouraged everyone present to sign up with Illinois People’s Action to keep in touch as the fight against fracking continues in Illinois, whether or not the fracking legislation passes in the next two weeks.

The following day, over 80 people from Bloomington-Normal protested against the passage of fracking at the Illinois capitol building. Protesters filled the hearing room, and both Sandra Steingraber and Josh Fox testified against the bill supported by the gas industry, big environmental organizations and the AFL-CIO (See video of her testimony and those supporting fracking in Illinois). Unfortunately, the bill passed through committee and could come up for a vote in the next week.

[For the latest news in Sprinfield, including the vote today allowing fracking out of committee, read the coverage by the Chicago Tribune. Legislators voted the measure out of committee amid widespread citizen protest in the hearing.]

For regular updates on the fight against fracking, visit the Illinois People’s Action website and Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment. People can also like the IPA page on Facebook for information.

Photos from Springfield, May 21st

Courtesy of Illinois People’s Action

Illinois residents opposing fracking fill up the committee hearing of legislation that would green-light fracking in Illinois. Courtesy of Illinois People’s Action.

Bill Rau interviewed by the press. Courtesy of Illinois People’s Action.

Josh Fox speaking at the capitol. Courtesy of Illinois People’s Action.

For information on her life and work, visit Sandra Steingraber’s website at http://steingraber.com/ Also, embedded immediately after the statement below, you can watch Sandra’s very recent interview with Bill Moyers.

Sandra Steingraber: Prepared Sentencing Statement for the Reading Town Court,
April 17, 2013

Your Honor, I am not a lawyer. I am a biologist and a human being. I am also a mother of a 14-year-old and an 11-year-old. I bring all these identities to your courtroom tonight.

I am guilty of an act of trespass. On March 18, I willfully stood on private property owned by the Inergy company and blocked access to a compressor station site that is being constructed in order to prepare explosive hydrocarbon gases, propane and butane, for storage in abandoned salt caverns that are located beside and beneath Seneca Lake.

In my field of environmental health, the word trespass has meaning. Toxic trespass refers to involuntary human exposure to a chemical or other pollutant. It is a contamination without consent. It is my belief, as a biologist, that Inergy is guilty of toxic trespass. Inergy has been out of compliance with EPA regulations every quarter for the past three years. In spite of this, Inergy applied for, and has received, from the state of New York a permit to discharge, every day, an additional 44,000 pounds of chloride into Seneca Lake. That’s 22 tons a day. That’s 8000 tons a year. Seneca Lake is a source of drinking water for 100,000 people. Those industrial discharges trespass into the bodies of those who drink it.

Additionally, Inergy’s planned 60-foot flare stack will release hazardous air pollutants, including ozone precursors, as will the fleets of diesel trucks hauling propane. This kind of air pollution is linked to heart attack and stroke risk, preterm birth, and asthma in children. Thus does Inergy trespass into our air and lungs. I see this as a real danger to my 11-year-old son, who has a history of asthma. We live 15 miles to the east “directly downwind” from this facility.

Inergy’s plans to industrialize the lakeshore will bring 24/7 light and noise pollution into a tranquil community. These forms of trespass also have health consequences, including increased risk for breast cancer and elevated blood pressure.

And because Inergy is building out infrastructure for the storage and transportation of greenhouse gases obtained by fracturing shale, Inergy trespasses into our climate and contributes to its ongoing destablization at a time when the best science show us that we need to be rapidly moving away from fossil fuels of all kinds.

Lastly, the risk of catastrophic accidents from the storage of liquefied petroleum gases in salt caverns is real. It has happened in at least 10 previous occasions. The 14-acre sinkhole in Belle Rose, Louisiana, which is now making headlines, was caused by a collapsed salt cavern. It sent crude oil gushing up into surface water and natural gas into groundwater.

As a biologist, I have submitted expert comments and petitions about Inergy’s application for permits to both the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. However, I am hampered in my efforts to judge the structural soundness of the salt caverns because the company that owns them insists that the scientific research that documents the history of these caverns ”at least one of which sits on a fault line” is a trade secret.

Your honor, how can geological history become proprietary information? Without access to data, how can any member of the public evaluate the risks we are being compelled to endure by the repurposing of salt caverns into giant underground cigarette lighters?
In closing, my actions were taken to protest the trespass of Inergy into our air, water, bodies, safety, and security. My small, peaceful act of trespass was intended to prevent a much larger, and possibly violent one.

The people of Bellrose, Lousiana, are now facing relocation after the catastrophic collapse of the salt cavern there. Family homes are being abandoned. And the signs on the front lawns of the empty houses read, “No trespassing.”

To bring attention to such hazards for the Finger Lakes “and for the act of protecting water, which is life itself“ — I trespassed. It was an act of civil disobedience. For that, and because I have deep respect for the rule of law, which Inergy company does not, I am willing to go to jail.

For more Just BloNo coverage of the Chicago teachers, CTU leader Debby Pope addressed Bloomington-Normal labor leaders and community activists in early September just prior to the 2012 CTU strike.

Dear Representatives:

On March 29th, I wrote you on limitations in the definition of hydrofracking in HB2615 and promised to follow with a letter on the unsafe practices codified in the bill. Here, I offer a brief elaboration on how HB2615 sanctions water, air, and soil pollution.

1. Water.

The setback in HB2615 for private water wells is 500 feet from gas and oil wells; the setback from streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs is only 300 feet. Figure 3 in Osborn et al.’s article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (figure shown below) shows why these setbacks are unsafe for shale gas. Osborn’s findings establish a very high probability of dangerous levels of methane contamination in private water wells when fracking occurs within 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) of a well. At levels of 10 milligrams of methane per liter of water (the beginning of the grey band in Figure 3) occupants in a home with contaminated water wells face the risk of fire, explosion, or asphyxiation.

Figure 3. Methane concentrations as function of distance to nearest gas well

The private well setback in HB 2615 is less than 1/6th of the minimally safe distance. Since well pads can be placed very close to the shoreline of a reservoir (300 foot shoreline setback; 1,500 foot setback from intake pipe), with horizontal legs of shale gas wells allowed to run directly underneath the reservoir, city water supplies receive little protection from pollution.

2. Air.

Volatile organic compounds, aromatic hydrocarbons, other air pollutants, and raw methane are released during well drilling and completion, production, processing and transmission of gas and oil. These emissions are not visible to the naked eye but can be seen with an infrared camera. This short video, “The Intersection of Between Hydraulic Fracturing and Climate Change” prepared by Dr. Anthony Ingraffea (Cornell University), a leading expert on fracture mechanics, shows what these emissions look like with an infrared camera.

Methane Emissions from Fracking – Dr. Ingraffea

Emissions given off by produced water and oil battery tanks, flares, and most especially condensate tanks, can also be considerable, as the next short video will show. Please note the pollution and black carbon emissions from flares because flares will dot the Illinois landscape, if industrial scale hydrofracking is allowed in our state.

The cumulative effect of flares surrounding Williston, North Dakota – representing less than 1/5th of the total Bakken field – is now so extensive that the area lit up at night is about as large as the bright urban lighting of the Chicago metropolitan area. The part of the Bakken field developed thus far is circled in the photo below.

Source: NPR, A Mysterious Source of Light Shows Up in the North Dakota Dark, by Robert Krulwich (January 16, 2013)

Do we want large swaths of Western, Central, and Southern Illinois so lit up, an outcome that would leave, not only rural areas, but large parts our more densely-populated state under a plume of toxic gases? Has anyone examined the body of research on the adverse health effects of living next to the roar, stench, and noxious emissions of oil- or gas-field flares?

What I find particularly worrying is the provision allowing for gas and oil well development practically next door to a school (500 foot setback from the property line). Emissions from industrial-scale shale gas activities in Texas and Colorado have created dangerous amounts of ground-level smog. Dr. Theo Colborn bluntly warns that smog “slowly eats away at the tissue of the lungs…The lungs cannot replace these damaged cells” (Video of Dr. Colborn; Dr. Colborn Article). Furthermore, these emissions can drift miles downwind from the sites of drilling, fracking, well completions, hydrocarbon processing, flares, and storage tanks.

Fossil-fueled air pollution is now so severe in Asia that 1.2 million Chinese died prematurely from air pollution in 2010. School children in Beijing often have to forgo exercise or exercise inside their schools because it is unsafe to play outside. Outside activities and sporting events are cancelled when pollution is too high. Upscale, private schools in China now build purified air domes so that students can practice sports without damaging their lungs.

Will Illinois school children, located in a frack zone, be prohibited from exercising in their school playgrounds in the future because it will be unsafe to do so?

3. Soil.

One of the largest operational costs for oil or gas wells involves the storage, transport, and disposal of produced water — the waste water emerging with gas or oil after production begins. This water is then stored in tanks until reused or trucked to a disposal site. More properly called brine, it has tree-killing levels of salt, contains toxic elements, such as barium, manganese, vanadium, lead, and arsenic, and may contain highly elevated levels of radium-226, which has a half-life of 1,600 years.

Some truckers dump this toxic brine into rivers and other areas in the countryside, or leave the valves open on their trucks, as this photo shows.

Source: Wetzel County Action Group

Due to the lack of enforcement efforts, this cost-cutting practice appears to be growing, especially in North Dakota. According to Jeff Keller, Army Corps of Engineers, “There is no enforcement…None.”

Citizens are documenting dumping, apparently to no avail, because state agencies are turning a blind eye to the practice:

Without a comprehensive and strictly enforced system of trucking manifests, equivalent to what is required for transporting low-level radioactive waste, it will be impossible to stop dumping in Illinois. And there is no such system for manifests included in HB2615. Such dumping, or the use of produced water as a dust control agent or de-icer, will create a gradual but eventually dangerous buildup of soil-sterilizing salt, toxic elements, and radioactive materials in our environment.

Here, then, are three critical areas where HB2615 falls woefully short. We therefore have great difficulty understanding the support in Springfield for this legislation. We are told that “regulations are needed,” but does not the brief review above show these industrial practices to be inherently unsafe?

Illinois citizens have a constitutional guarantee to a healthful environment in Article XI, Section 2 of our State Constitution:
Each person has the right to a healthful environment. Each person may enforce this right against any party, governmental or private, through appropriate legal proceedings subject to reasonable limitation and regulation as the General Assembly may provide by law.

Would not HB2615 compromise citizens’ constitution right to sue the oil and gas industry for pollution of our air, water, and soil? Would not HB2615 end up protecting the industry by undermining citizens’ rights to enforce thorough legal proceedings their constitutional right to a “healthful environment?”

Sincerely yours,

William C. Rau
Spokesman, Illinois People’s Action &
Professor Emeritus, Industrial Sociology
Illinois State University

An adherent of the Zapatista 6th Declaration of the Lacondon Jungle, the CNUC focuses on organizing community power “From Below and to the Left,” or as she explained, from the grassroots and against the systemic oppressions of capitalism. The group de-emphasizes the importance of leaders in building community power, and rejects outright the subordination of social movements to political elites.

“Why do we need a political class?” Ms. Martinez asked. “They listen only when there are elections…People are just ladders to them.”

Martinez described the goal of CNUC as a defense of people and their needs, one that is non-hierarchical and without messiahs, which in its development would serve as a democratic alternative to the dominant political systems that mostly serve capital, corporations and the market.

Luz Rivera Martinez, lead organizer of the Centro Nacional Urbano Campesino, speaks to students on community organizing and principles of bottom-up democracy and solidarity.

As relayed by Ms. Martinez, the CNUC was founded in 1993 in the struggle to oppose NAFTA, the so-called ‘free trade’ treaty which was part of the decades-long neoliberal assault to eliminate protections of workers and peasants in Mexico won by them during the Revolution. After NAFTA’s passage, CNUC continued to fight for peoples’ rights, opposing the subsequent encroachment of U.S. multinationals in Mexico and the whittling away of rights for the Mexican people.

Martinez provided in detail the community work of CNUC opposing corporate power in Tlaxcala.

The organization gives support to many different community campaigns and projects: Supporting family farms, building autonomous schools and clinics, defending age-old community water rights from large corporations like Coca-Cola, helping organize agricultural workers against the predatory GMO seed assault of Monsanto, and fighting for adequate housing, just to name a few. She emphasized that the CNUC works alongside a plethora of other Tlaxcala organizations, developing networks of solidarity, and works to assist organizing goals established democratically by the people themselves.

The CNUC and the Mexico Solidarity Network also collaborate in running a social movements study abroad program in Chiapas, Tlaxcala and Mexico City, encouraging student participants to think of their work as acting in solidarity with people and their struggles for freedom, not approaching their work as “charity” or “service”. IWU student Alex Monzón participated in a CNUC school last year, and based upon his continuing relationships with the people he met, he helped organize the IWU talk with Tony Nelson of the Mexico Solidarity Network.

Click here for a video of her enlightening talk, given in Columbus, Ohio last year. The video is worth watching, as a short summary cannot do justice to the breadth and depth of her talk. For more information on the CNUC, the Mexico Solidarity Network, and the CNUC’s current campaign to free political prisoner Alberto Patishtán, please consult the resource section immediately below.

Resources

Mexico Solidarity Network
The Mexico Solidarity Network is an organization dedicated to popular education and autonomous community organizing. In addition to our community work in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood and speaking tours, MSN also administers a unique, social justice-oriented study abroad program that allows students to learn about grassroots movements in Mexico by living with the families that comprise them, including members of CNUC. For more information, visit www.mexicosolidarity.org/studyabroad

6th Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle
The Zapatista declaration to which the Centro Nacional Urbano Campesino is a signatory.

Alberto Patishtán, political prisoner from Chiapas (In Spanish)
After Luz Martinez’ talk and discussion, participants took a picture in solidarity with the campaign to free political prisoner Alberto Patishtán. The site above has information, in Spanish, related to the campaign. The blog post from Mexico Voices has an account of his case.

Video of Luz Rivera Martinez’ talk, given in Columbus, Ohio, 2012

[Visit IllinoisWatchdog.org for excellent reporting on Springfield rally against fracking and HB 2615.]

The Illinois Environment Council (IEC), and a handful of its big members, have gotten behind the gas industry bill, supporting the insufficient and unenforceable regulation of fracking, when in New York a grassroots movement is keeping fracking out of their state.

Here in Illinois, the grassroots movement opposing HB 2615 and fracking is represented by a statewide coalition, including CAPOW! (Citizens Act to Protect Our Water), Environment Illinois, the Gray Panthers, Illinois Coalition For a Moratorium on Fracking (ICMF), Illinois People’s Action (IPA), Food and Water Watch, RAN Chicago, Rising Tide, S.A.F.E. (Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing our Environment), Stop the Frack Attack on Illinois, among others.

In response to criticisms of the large environmentalist organizations, IEC Executive Director Jennifer Walling characterized the division between groups as “between the established ‘environmental coalition’ and the ‘activists and occupy groups.’” The distinction made by Walling, between professional insiders and grassroots activists, is one that the grassroots groups accept as a telling indication of where the two sides are coming from.

Just prior to the rally and lobby day, Illinois People’s Action (www.illinoispeoplesaction.org) occupied the office of the Illinois Petroleum Institute and challenged former legislator, now lobbyist Jim Watson, on their support of dirty profits over clean water. See Michael Perrillo’s video below for full coverage of the action.

Photo from Annette McMichael

Just last week, over 60 people traveled to Springfield with Illinois People’s Action to take action against the recently introduced legislation, and next week Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment (SAFE) and Illinois People’s Action (IPA) will collaborate in another action-filled lobby day in the state’s capital (See video below of last week’s lobby day).

Next Tuesday, March 12th, preceded by a direct action, environmentalists throughout the state will visit their representatives at the capitol to tell them that fracking cannot be regulated. SB 2615 is neither strict nor safe. We need a outright ban. People are meeting up in Springfield in the parking lot of 225 College Street (corner of College and Monroe), where there will be quick briefing on the start of the day. For more information on the day, including a detailed schedule of visit the Facebook event page: Ban Fracking! Kill HB 2615! Action and Lobby Day.

There is also an online petition to support SB 1418, a two-year moratorium on fracking, as an alternative to an immediate passage of HB 2615′s impossible regulation. We need to promote renewable over polluting energy sources, and SB 1418 demands that we slow down the oil and gas industry’s imposition of fracking in Illinois, the very minimum of what is required for a democratic decision.

Below you will find two videos of the last lobby day to oppose fracking Illinois.

[Read the opinion statement by Food and Water Watch opposing "regulated" fracking in Illinois.]

People arrived in the capitol early in the morning, many carpooling in a caravan from Bloomington-Normal, stopping first at the Northfield Hotel where a pro-fracking seminar hosted by the Association of Illinois County Board and Commissioners was taking place. It was known that the seminar – run jointly by business, large environmental NGOs, and state regulators – would promote HB 2615, or “regulated” fracking, as the only way forward on the issue.

IPA held a rally outside the hotel, leafleting and speaking with county board members and commissioners from across the state.

Amid the lively chants in the hotel parking lot, numerous speakers addressed the crowd. After greetings by Cristina Deutsch and Reverend Charles Jackson, Bill Rau outlined the fatal flaws with regulating fracking through HB 2615, and Annette McMichael of SAFE spoke passionately on how her property rights would be threatened by fracking operations in southern Illinois.

Illinois People’s Action members and allies then traveled to the state capitol to meet with Governor Quinn and give him petitions that contained over 600 signatures opposing fracking in Illinois. The governor was not in the state, but his staffers met with IPA representative Barbara Heyl, denying a meeting with the entire group.

Concluding the day, IPA held a meeting with the office of Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, to share displeasure with HB 2615, labeling it a defeat for ordinary citizens and grassroots environmentalists.

Representatives for Lisa Madigan defended the fracking bill as inevitable once lobbyists could not find enough support at the capitol for a moratorium. Her office, and a number of organizations in the Illinois Environmental Council, decided to support “regulated” fracking after the failure of their ineffectual behind-the-scenes lobbying of legislators.

IPA’s leadership team criticized the bill for its many flaws, and disagreed with the very notion that fracking could be made safe by regulation.

The Attoney Genral’s office claimed that HB 2615 provides the strictest regulations of fracking in the country, to which Dawn Dannenbring-Carlson responded “Strict does not mean safe.” As Bill Rau pointed out, the bill does not do enough to protect our air, water and land in Illinois.

It was also pointed out by Dawn Dannenbring-Carlson that the “environmentalist” negotiators were cherry-picked by Representative Bradley, and anti-fracking activists were denied a place at the table from the beginning.

Media Coverage

State Journal Register (Springfield): Anti-Fracking Protestors Stage Rally in Springfield, by Tim Landis

WICS Channel 20 (ABC): Grassroots Org Protests Fracking Bill (VIDEO)

Pictures

McLean County Board Member, Victoria Harris, speaks out against fracking prior to the seminar organized for Illinois county board members and commissioners.

IPA representative Barbara Heyl reports back from her meeting with Governor Quinn staffers. Staffers refused to meet with IPA as a group.

Illinois People’s Action holds a meeting to oppose pro-fracking legislation, HB 2615, with the Attorney General’s office.

In BloNo, the IWU Sierra Club organized an indoor solidarity rally in the Hansen Student Center on the Illinois Wesleyan campus, featuring student activists and faculty.

Three IWU students who attended the D.C. rally – Megan George, Alex Kim, and Amy Seter – spoke of their experience during the one hour event. Following their remarks, IWU faculty members shared their knowledge on the tar sands and climate change (See videos of their presentations below), and Danny Kenny and Mark Swanson provided students with information on how to be involved in campus and community activism.

Also in the line-up, local band – the Red Scarves – entertained the crowd with Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and local community activist, Bill Rau, shared an upcoming IPA day of action against fracking on March 4th.

Altogether, over 70 people attended the rally, followed by a spirited march through the campus. Below are pictures, videos of some of the presentations, and a resource section related to the weekend’s events.

Presentations

Dr. R. Given Harper

Dr. Harper put into context the current Keystone XL pipeline debate, covering where the oil sands are located, the costs of mining the oil sands, and the costs of burning them.

Dr. Narendra K. Jaggi

Dr. Jaggi presented on the current energy situation, in light of proposals to build the Keystone XL pipeline, and the importance of renewables.

Pictures

Danny Kenny, student activist, spoke on the importance of informed and active in the community.

Resources

Democracy Now! Coverage: “Tens of Thousands Rally to Stop Keystone XL Pipeline and Urge Obama to Move “Forward on Climate”

350.org: “Great Media Coverage for “Forward on Climate” and Keystone XL Protest”

Tar Sands Action

Alternet: “Playing Golf as the Planet Burns: Obama Meets With Oil-Man as Protesters Call for Halt to Keystone Pipeline” by Medea Benjamin

In an educational sponsored by the Bloomington-Normal Coalition for Peace and Justice (BNCPJ and the Bloomington-Normal branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), over 20 people heard Joe Iosbaker, a Chicago labor and peace activist, discuss FBI targeting of peace and international solidarity activists in recent years.

In his talk, Mr. Iosbaker related the FBI raids on himself and other Midwest peace activists in 2010, all of whom were involved in organizing peaceful anti-war protests during the 2008 Republican Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Although all the activists were served subpoenas to appear before a federal grand jury, not one out of the 14 activists agreed to comply with the witchhunt.

The website Committee to Stop FBI Repression (stopfbi.net) has a comprehensive timeline of the events surrounding the case.

After two years, the FBI harassment of the Midwest activists is still a threat even though no formal charges have been made. An outpouring of solidarity from individuals and groups has brought national attention to the case.

During the question and answer period held after Mr. Iosbaker’s talk, the conversation also included FBI repression of Carlos Montes, other peace groups and the Occupy movement.

Resources

Committee to Stop FBI Repression

Democracy Now! Coverage: FBI Raids Homes of Antiwar and Pro-Palestinian Activists in Chicago and Minneapolis

David Shipler’s article in the Nation magazine: “Will Obama the Constitutional Lawyer Please Stand Up”

Video