Primary referendum on fracking puts southern Illinois county in national spotlight

VIENNA — The divisive national debate over fracking has found its way into homes, cafes and even Sunday school classes in Johnson County.

Ernie Henshaw of Johnson County Citizens Opposed to Fracking Proposition (also a county commissioner) and Annette McMichael of Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment talk about both sides of the fracking debate. Johnson County in southern Illinois has become the focal point of a national debate on fracking, which involves using a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals to crack and hold open thick rock formations, releasing trapped oil and gas. Johnson County voters this week will vote on an advisory referendum that aims to ban fracking in the county.

Photos by Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register |

Annette McMichael and her group - Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment, or SAFE, have been at the forefront of the fight to ban hydraulic fracturing in Johnson County. The group has brought an advisory referendum to the ballot known as "Community Bill of Rights."

by Tim Landis, Business Editor, The State Journal-Register, March 15, 2014

VIENNA, IL — Hydraulic fracturing joins the usual local, state and federal offices on the Johnson County primary election ballot Tuesday.

In the weeks leading up to the election, the divisive national debate has found its way into homes, cafes and even Sunday school classes in the rural southern Illinois county better known for its scenic, rolling hills and two state prisons that are the largest local employers.

Johnson County voters will be asked by advisory referendum on Tuesday whether the county should adopt a “Community Bill of Rights” intended to ultimately ban fracking, as the practice also is known. Only one other county in the country, in New Mexico, has banned the practice, according to referendum organizers.

Proponents argue the referendum is a matter of local control and protecting the environment. Approval, opponents say, would not ban fracking to begin with but would result in costly lawsuits.

The fight has drawn national media attention. Both sides claim the other has used scare tactics and outside interest groups to sway the vote, using terms such as “extremists” and “radical” to describe each other. Both claim the mantle of grassroots organization.

“It's become quite the battle,” said County Commissioner Ernie Henshaw, a lifelong resident and an opponent of the proposition. He's among the organizers of the group, Johnson County Citizens Opposed to Fracking Proposition.

“If you'd told me a year ago we'd be here,” Henshaw said, “I wouldn't have believed you. But here we are.”

The ballot initiative

“If you want to blame someone, blame me.”

Local resident Annette McMichael offered the self-assessment in response to claims her group — Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment (SAFE) — has served as a front for outside environmental organizations to get the fracking question on the ballot.

She pointed out the three-member county board suggested the non-binding advisory referendum as an alternative to SAFE's call for a board-approved ban. Only about 380 petition signatures were needed to get the question on the March 18 primary ballot.

SAFE collected approximately 1,000. There are an estimated 8,400 registered voters in Johnson County.

“We sat around the kitchen table,” McMichael said of SAFE's formation. “We're all volunteers.”

McMichael estimated SAFE has 90 members in Johnson, Hardin, Pope, Jackson and Union counties.

She and husband, Jim, moved in December from the Champaign area to their two-story home and 10 acres in the northeast corner of Johnson County. But Annette McMichael said the couple has owned the land at the edge of the Shawnee National Forest for more than a decade and have been frequent visitors to the area. Her entry into the fracking debate, McMichael said, began with concerns about the water supply during the drought of 2012.

“I had no idea we were sitting on a fracking zone,” said McMichael, who considers the practice a dire threat to air, water and health.

The more she learned, McMichael said, the more she became convinced only an out-right ban would suffice. But she said SAFE members have no illusions should voters approve the advisory referendum on Tuesday given the opposition of local and state elected officials.

“They're never going to approve a Community Bill of Rights, never in a million years,” McMichael said. “We want people to send a message to county commissioners that we want to ban fracking. We're making a statement. That was always our intent.

“This is only one step,” McMichael said. “We'll never, never, never give up.”

Mora County

Mora County, N.M., finds itself in a legal fight less than a year after becoming the first county in the nation to ban fracking.

The Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico and three county landowners filed suit in federal court in November claiming the ban violates state laws and is unconstitutional. The ban was approved in April 2013 with support from cattle farmers who viewed fracking as a threat to land and water.

Legal troubles in a county that can little afford the cost are their chief fear, say opponents of a Community Bill of Rights in Johnson County.

“They all follow the same pattern. It's a kind of boilerplate language. This would wind up right back in the laps of the county board,” said Zach Garrett of Shawnee Professional Services in Vienna. His father, firm CEO Mitch Garrett, is among the organizers of referendum opponents.

The “rights,” said Zach Garrett, could be extended to all manner of environmental issues, including farming, genetically modified crops and water use. Expensive legal challenges would be certain to follow, according to opponents.

Not so, said Natalie Long, southern Illinois coordinator for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. The national, not-for-profit law firm has helped organize anti-fracking educational campaigns and referendums across the country.

Long said, of the 160 local governments to approve community rights statutes, only Mora County, N.M., has faced a court challenge.

“Whatever comes out of the vote, the ultimate vote falls to the Johnson County commissioners,” said Long, who is an attorney. “This is about fracking and nothing else. It would be the commissioners who would draft a local rights bill.”

Long said her group would recommend provisions, but so could local residents.

Local control?

Proposition supporters say Henshaw and other opponents have tried to change the subject from fracking as a result of strong local support for a ban. Henshaw insisted the group has not taken a stand on fracking, but that state regulation makes it a moot point.

Even as Johnson County voters prepare to cast ballots, regulators at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources continue to work on final regulations that would implement legislation signed by Gov. Pat Quinn in June 2013.

Draft rules released last fall came in for a blizzard of criticism from environmental groups, which claimed the agency had sold out to the oil industry.

The regulatory fight in Springfield has only added to the uncertainty in Johnson County, Henshaw said, adding that the county state's attorney has provided an informal opinion that commissioners have no legal authority to ban fracking.

A spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said that office has not yet addressed the issue of local versus state control.

“Initially, I wasn't overly concerned, I'll put it that way,” Henshaw said. “Had I known at the beginning what I know now, I could have become concerned a lot sooner.”

Local control, Long said, is at the core of the fracking issue and the Johnson County referendum. Whatever the outcome Tuesday, she said, the issue will not fade. Legal challenges could be necessary to settle the question.

“It's really at the heart of what we're doing,” Long said. “If the state passes a law that violates the rights of its citizens, how do you address that?”

Contact Tim Landis: 788-1536, tim.landis@sj-r.com, twitter.com/timlandisSJR.

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Hydraulic fracturing

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates domestic natural gas production will increase from 23 million cubic feet in 2011 to 33.1 trillion cubic feet by 2040, a 44 percent increase. Nearly all of the projected increase is expected to come from shale-gas released through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracturing or fracking.

Shale formations underlie most of Illinois, including central Illinois.

Here is how the process works:

* Fracturing relies on injection of more than 1 million gallons of water, sand and chemicals down and across horizontal wells at depths up to 10,000 feet.

* The pressurized mix causes the shale to crack.

* Sand particles hold the fissures open, allowing natural gas to flow up the well.

Source: “Annual Energy Outlook 2013” of the U.S. Energy Information Administration

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Ballot proposition

Voters in Johnson County, in southern Illinois, will be asked to decide the following proposition on the Tuesday primary election ballot.

“Shall the people's right to local self-government be asserted by Johnson County to ban corporate fracking as a violation of their rights to health, safety and a clean environment?”

The referendum is advisory. The county board of commissioners would have to approve a ban.

http://www.sj-r.com/article/20140315/NEWS/140319541/

Jeff Biggers: FrackGate Comes to Illinois? Media Blackout on Fracking Vote in Johnson County

by Jeff Biggers, EcoWatch, February 26, 2014

As the national media puts the spotlight on the “FrackGate” public relations scandal in Ohio, where state officials worked to “marginalize opponents of fracking by teaming up with corporations—including Halliburton—business groups and media outlets,” Illinois residents behind a ballot initiative to ban fracking in rural Johnson County are facing a similar campaign of misinformation and local news blackout.

It’s bad enough that Illinois’ flawed state fracking regulations have spiraled into a widely denounced phase of disarray and confusion.

Until last Friday, the Vienna Times/Goreville Gazette newspaper company, the only local newspapers in Johnson County’s treasured Shawnee National Forest heartland, had provided fairly balanced coverage of the fracking debate, including the county commissioners’ decision last May to support a one-year moratorium on the controversial fracking process, as out-of-state corporations like Kansas-based Woolsey Energy swept up land leases.

Two of the three Johnson County commissioners, in fact, had encouraged residents last fall to draw up their own “simple” ballot initiative to gauge the “will of the people.”

Sounds reasonable and democratic, no?

But now, with the same local citizens group’s non-binding ballot initiative gaining widespread support across the county from residents especially concerned about the threat of involuntary “forced pooling” from neighboring leases, the Vienna Times/Goreville Gazette has suddenly announced—according to local residents—a new policy to refuse all anti-fracking ads, letters to the editor or news releases, even as it accepts ads and press releases from an Orwellian campaign set up to dismiss the community rights-driven campaign against absentee fracking corporations as a “radical agenda of out-of-state interests.”

Since when are local farmers called “out-of-state” and absentee fracking corporations considered homeboys?

And since when has this ad become too dangerous for the Vienna Times?

Instead, featuring Shawnee Professional Services president Mitch Garrett and Johnson County Commissioner Ernie Henshaw—who had originally voted for the one-year moratorium and asked for public input—the Vienna Times/Goreville Gazette celebrated the kick-off of an opposition group to the county citizens initiative on its front page this week, and included an ad with a direct link to opposition’s Facebook page:

Two years ago, Vienna Times publisher Lonnie Hinton and Shawnee Professional

Service owner Mitch Garrett worked together on another hot issue: Ridding the town of stray cats.

And now, what about what the fracking cats about about to drag in? As in debunked and clearly exaggerated job promises, and the onslaught of the well-documented fracking reality of industrial traffic, workplace accidents and injuries, massive amounts of pollution and toxic discharges risking public health and potential earthquakes?

“I’ve never quite grasped how much power the oil and gas industry has until now. What they are doing to manipulate the vote makes me angry and sad. And, what industry has not begun to understand is that there are plenty of us, and more all the time who will never, never give up,” said Annette McMichaels, communications director for the Southern Illinoisans Against Fracturing Our Environment citizens groups, and a resident and landowner in Johnson County.

“The best way to have discussion is in open dialogue, solved in an equal and democratic fashion,” said Johnson County vegetable farmer Kris Pirmann, who is active in the community rights ballot initiative. “Open discourse is the only legitimate and democratic way, and shutting down one side is not open discourse.”

Not so, says the local media. The Vienna Times/Goreville Gazette failed to answer multiple queries about its new policies. But local residents noted a new sign at the newspaper office, with a warning signed by Vienna Times publisher Hinton: “We reserve the right to accept or reject material submitted for publication, including letters to the editor, news releases and advertising.”

Here’s the ballot initiative, drawn up by local Johnson County residents and southern Illinois native and resident Natalie Long, a community organizer with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund: 

“Shall the people’s right to local self-government be asserted by Johnson County to ban corporate fracking as a violation of their rights to health, safety, and a clean environment?”

 

“This ballot initiative is led by a local group of people of common concerns, Johnson County resident, many who are third or fourth generation farmers,” said Pirmann, the Johnson County vegetable farmer, who noted that more than 1,000 county residents signed a petition for the ballot. “The argument that this initiative is hijacked from the outside doesn’t hold any water.”

Long adds: “A Community Bill of Rights is a community-tailored document. It’s made up of two main parts: (1) a section that asserts the rights of the community, including the right to local self-governance, the right to clean air, and the right to clean water; and (2) an enumeration of activities that violate those rights, and therefore are prohibited in the community. Because a Community Bill of Rights is drafted with each particular community, that means that no two documents are the same. Instead, they reflect the priorities of the community. In this case, Johnson County citizens are hard at working crafting language that focuses specifically on prohibiting hydraulic fracturing—nothing else. Any claim otherwise is both misguided and false.”

Only days away from the March 18th ballot vote, Johnson County residents are not giving up on the local news media black out, or the political games from out-of-state industry sycophants. Redoubling their efforts, Johnson County residents are stepping up grassroots efforts and seeking funds to place the ads in regional newspapers.

“It appears we don’t have avenue to voice our concerns,” Pirmann said. “They just want us to be quiet and go away. But we’re Johnson County residents and we’re going to talk to Johnson County residents face-to-face, in a democratic fashion, and voice our opinions to protect our land and farms.”

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/26/frackgate-illinois-media-blackout-fracking-vote/