Illinois State Representative John Bradley, in introducing amendments #1 & #2 to Senate Bill 649, is attempting to circumvent the legal process that he himself set into motion just a year ago, when he claimed that his number one priority in putting together the Illinois Hydraulic Fracturing Regulatory Act was protecting Southern Illinois’s water.
In playing the most cynical and intolerant game of politics possible, John Bradley’s holiday weekend legislation attempts to completely bypass the fracking rule-making process that includes consideration of more than 36,000 public comments from online citizen responses and more than 1,000 participants in 5 public hearings, which featured 97% of all speakers talking against allowing fracking to take place in Illinois.
Bradley’s amendments to SB649 additionally call for a two-year fracking moratorium for Chicagoland, acknowledging that fracking industrialization is extremely dangerous practice. Meanwhile, he dooms 19 Southern Illinois counties (including all of his constituents) to the mass fracking industrialization of 50,000 to 100,000 fracked oil wells over the next 30 years.
Bradley’s amendments also completely removes from the rule-making process the IDNR, the Illinois governmental agency given the legal responsibility for ensuring that the regulations meet up to Bradley’s blustering hype.
A demonstrably immature John Bradley grimaces and mocks cancer survivor Dr. Sandra Steingraber during her testimony in front of the Illinois House Executive Committee Hearings on proposed fracking regulatory bill, SB 1715, on May 21, 2013.
John Bradley further illustrating his complete intolerence for the words of one of our nation's leading public health experts cancer survivor Dr. Sandra Steingraber.
It was only a year ago that a press release from the Illinois government news page included the following quote from John Bradley:
“This is a historic agreement between the environmental coalition and industry,” Rep. Bradley said. “I appreciate all the hard work of the many people who were involved in this process. It provides for the strongest regulations in the history of the United States, but allows the industry to develop in a responsible manner.”
There is absolutely nothing responsible about bypassing state law to circumvent the collective voice of the citizens of Illinois and expert review by the IDNR.
There is absolutely nothing responsible about dividing the state of Illinois by providing a moratorium on fracking for Chicagoland, thus acknowledging its immiment danger, while pushing fracking to begin immediately in southern Illinois.
There is absolutely nothing responsible about legally demoting residents of Southern Illinois second class citizen status as official inhabitants of a resource colony sacrifice zone.
There is absolutely nothing responsible about being a transparent extraction industry shill, who takes money from the dirty oil & gas industry, and transforms it into luxury hotel stays and expensive jewelry gifts for staffers, in exchange for opening up Southern Illinois to more than 30 years of unregulated fracking industrialization and the contaminated water, air and soil it will bring with it.
There is absolutely nothing responsible about an obvious attempt to shift the conversation from the clear scientific, economic and social necessity of banning fracking in Illinois, to John Bradley now attempting to bait us into fighting FOR the IDNR reviewed and approved regulations… as we all understand that fracking industrialization simply cannot be made safe, as nowhere do the resources actually exist to appropriately regulate it.
To put things simply:
We wanted a ban on fracking yesterday,
we want a ban on fracking today,
and we will still want a ban on fracking tomorrow …
Southern Illinois is not a resource colony. Southern Illinois WILL NOT be Chicago’s sacrifice zone.
John Bradley lives a lavish lifestyle with stays in luxury Chicago hotels on the extraction industry's dime, while consigning his constituents in Southern Illinois to toxic water, air and soil.