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Dr. Lora Chamberlain, a family physician inthe Chicago area, strode to the front of apacked assembly hall at the University ofIllinois at Chicago last November. Facingrepresentatives of the Illinois Department ofNatural Resources (IDNR), she leaned intothe micro-

phone and said in a quiet but passion-ate voice, “The lack of chemicaldisclosure in these regulations is rep-rehensible.” Much of the crowd ofabout 300 burst into applause.

Chamberlain was voicing her dis-pleasure over the draft regulations forimplementing the Illinois HydraulicFracturing Regulatory Act, which theGeneral Assembly passed and GovernorPat Quinn signed on June 17, 2013. Shespoke at one of the public hearings thatthe IDNR was holding—right duringthe heart of the holiday season--toallow citizens to weigh in on the regu-lations.

And boy, did they weigh in. Hy-draulic fracturing—“fracking,” in pop-ular parlance—has barged its way tothe top of the environmental agenda inIllinois because energy companies arepushing to start drilling for natural gasin downstate Illinois, which sits on topof the vast New Albany shale formation.Lying more than a mile deep, this bed ofrock holds as much as 11 trillion cubic feet of nat-ural gas, enough to meet the needs of at least 10million households for 15 years. It’s invisiblegold, if you will.Since the late 1990s, fracking has set off a boom

in domestic oil and natural gas. In 2012, Merrill Lynch reported thatfracking has catapulted domestic energy production from $70 milliona day in January 2010 to $900 million a day in April 2012. The boomin natural gas has lowered prices, saving the American economy morethan five hundred million bucks a day.Pro-fracking forces claim that the technology will give a big boost

to downstate Illinois’s foundering economy. Brad Richards, the Ex-ecutive Vice President of the Illinois Oil and Gas Association, said,“New developments like the Bakken Shale in North Dakota andthe Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania have created tens of thousands

of new jobs with billions ofdollars in economic output.”

To opponents, though, fracking is a highly dangerous proce-durethat will foul water, soil, and air and threaten the health of anyonewho lives anywhere near a well. Even though fracking will be done in

central and southern Illinois, the effects could reach all the way toChicago. Chamberlain explained, “When companies dispose ofthese toxic wastes by injecting them into the earth, they have causedearthquakes. And those earthquakes could be felt in Chicago.” Butif fracking causes health problems downstate, the costs could fallon all Illinois taxpayers.

Energy companies can coax oil and natural gasfrom once-inaccessible shale formations in theMidwest because of new technologies--horizon-tal drilling, compression of water at very highpressure, and the use of chemicals. Operators

drill vertically for as much as a mile and then direct the drill bithorizontally, giving access to a greater percentage of the shale. Thedrillers set off small explosive charges to create fractures in the shale andthen pump as much as four million gallons of water, chemicals, andsand at very high pressure to open new fissures and enlarge the exist-ing ones. The sand acts as a proppant, holding the fissures open so thatoil or natural gas can flow to the well and back to the surface. A cocktail of chemicals improves the efficiency of the process. A

provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005—popularly known as theHalliburton loophole—lets companies keep these chemicals secret.Even so, The Endocrine Disruption Exchange, a Colorado-basednonprofit that examines the environmental impact of chemicals,got hold of lists of the chemicals and ID’d 944 fracking productscontaining 632 chemicals, including benzene, xylene, toluene, andother toxins. Seventy-five percent of the chemicals can affect the

Fracking Comes to the Prairie State

ON ENVIRONMENT

BY CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON

Thirty-seven percent can damage the endocrine system.Twenty-five percent can causecancer and mutations.

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skin and eyes. Forty percent to fifty percent can impact the brain

and nervous system. Thirty-seven percent can dam-age the endocrine system. Twenty-five percent cancause cancer and mutations. Fracking may also re-lease radium and other radioactive materials buried inthe earth.The energy industry holds that these chemicals can-

not leak into surrounding soil and groundwater. Ac-cording to Energy in Depth, a pro-drilling group,“There are zero confirmed cases of groundwater con-tamination from hydraulic fracturing.”Yet one study in 2011 linked contamination of 68 water

wells in Pennsylvania and New York to fracking. Ac-cording to Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Engi-neering at Cornell University, about 6 percent ofPennsylvania’s oil and natural gas wells have beenproven to be leaky, allowing contaminants to escape intosoil and groundwater.

Another contentious issue is the impact of frackingon climate change. Methane is the main component ofnatural gas, and it is much more potent than carbondioxide as a greenhouse gas. In April 2013, the EPA re-ported that the industry leaked less methane that it oncedid. But Dr. Joseph Romm, a Senior Fellow at the Cen-ter for American Progress, disputes this conclusion, cit-ing a study by the National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration showing leakage rates between 6 per-cent and 12 percent at a large gas field.

Controversy also surrounds the disposal ofwastewater, of which there are two kinds.Flowback is the liquid that belches back up

to the surface right after fracking. Produced water iscontaminated water that emerges from the well overtime. Companies store wastewater either in open pits,where the toxins can evaporate and pollute the air, orin enclosed storage tanks. The operators carry thewastewater away to specialized treatment facilities.Researchers have found, though, that even after treat-ment, the water contains radioactive substances,chloride, and bromide, posing dangers for drinkingwater and aquatic life. Energy companies have alsoinjected flowback into wells, but in 2012, the processwas blamed for earthquakes in Youngstown, Ohio.

Another threat, environmentalists say, is that frack-ing uses huge amounts of water—70 billion to 140 bil-lion gallons of water a year. According to Energy inDepth, though, “In the Barnett Shale in north Texas,water used for oil and gas activity only accounted forabout 0.5 percent of total demand in 2011.” In addition,energy companies have been reusing as much of 70 per-cent of the water in ongoing fracking operations.

In 2012, the General Assembly debated two ap-proaches to fracking: a two-year moratorium, or tightregulation. According to Ann Alexander, Senior At-torney in the Chicago office of the Natural Re-sources Defense Council, “In the fall of 2012,

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momentum was moving toward a regulatorybill, so environmental groups, the legislature,and the industry negotiated a bill. We wantedas strong a regulatory bill as we could get.”In addition to the NRDC, environmentalgroups included the Illinois EnvironmentalCouncil, the Envisronmental Law and Pol-icy Center, Faith in Place, the RespiratoryHealth Association, and the Sierra Club.

What finally emerged was the Illinois Hy-draulic Regulatory Act. According toAlexander, “Overall, the bill was thestrongest package of regulations in the coun-try.” The law prohibited storage of waste-water in open pits, forced operators to shutdown wells if chemicals were found outsidethe shale formation, required monitoring ofwater quality, set rigorous standards for wellconstruction, and stipulated that wells beplaced away from water sources. If contam-ination was found, the operator had to provethat the contamination was not the result offracking.

The IDNR then started to draft the rules forimplementing the law. Environmental groupsalleged that the draft regulations opened uptoo many loopholes. Brad Richards dis-agreed, citing “the cumulative effect of so

much new regulation.” He continued, “Forsome perspective, California recently re-leased their draft regulations for hydraulicfracturing. They are 13 pages in length. Ourregulations are 130 pages.”

Environmental groups were especiallycritical of the rules laying out what happenswhen an accident occurs. Chamberlain, whois an organizer for the anti-fracking groupFrack Free Illinois, said, “It’s unclear in theregulations how health professionals are sup-posed to get information about the chemicalsafter an accident. Doctors and other healthprofessionals have to access the DNR to findout what specific chemicals are being used,but they may not be able to reach the DNR.Also, doctors have to sign a non-disclosureagreement about the chemicals. Signing anNDA is totally onerous.”

Another point of contention is the tem-porary use of open pits to store waste-water. If storage tanks are temporarily

filled, the law allows operators to store waste-water in open pits for up to seven days. But, asAnn Alexander pointed out, “The regulationsweaken the law because they allow the opera-tor to remove the flowback seven days afterfracking is completed.” As a result, the fluids

might sit in an open pit for as much as a month. Environmental groups also attacked the

level of fines, which start at $50 for the firstviolation. Alexander asserted, “The fines areridiculously low. They just become a cost ofdoing business.”

Some time this spring, the IDNR will issuerevised regulations. After that, the JointCommittee on Administrative Rules in theGeneral Assembly must approve of the rules.Only then can the IDNR begin to issue frack-ing permits. The process will unfold over thenext several months.

During a recent debate in Pennsylvania,Dr. Terry Engelder of Penn State, who haslong been a fracking fan, said, “It’s all aboutnatural gas. There is no other route.” Cham-berlain strongly disagrees, explaining,“Fracking delays a transition to renewablefuels. We stay dependent on fossil fuels. Ourgovernment has subsidized fracking ratherthan renewable energy. We need to be goingin another direction.” At the heart of thefracking debate, then, is an even morecharged argument over the future of Amer-ica’s energy policies. The stakes are huge, andother states will be watching closely as Illi-nois begins to drill deep beneath its soil. o