By Kevin McDermott
March 15, 2014
STL
In this Tuesday, March 12, 2013 photo, environmental group members opposing oil drilling show support inside the Capitol rotunda in an effort to pressure lawmakers for a two-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Ill. llinois Gov. Pat Quinn has signed into law the nation’s strictest regulations for high-volume oil and gas drilling. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
VIENNA, Ill. • This little farming town at the edge of Shawnee National Forest has become an unlikely axis in the fight between U.S. environmental and oil interests over hydraulic fracturing — better known as “fracking.”
The issue hits Johnson County polling places Tuesday, with a referendum question that’s seldom been asked of American voters regarding the controversial oil-extraction process: Do you want to keep it out?
The question has fractured this quiet community like a piece of oil-soaked shale.
“In the last 20 years I’ve been here this is the first issue that I’ve actually seen people get upset at each other,” says Robin Harper-Whitehead, clerk and recorder for Johnson County, a picturesque but economically struggling collection of scattered farms and tiny towns near the bottom of Illinois.
The battle lines here mirror those across the country.
On one side are environmental activists who say Illinois’ leaders were too quick last year to throw open the state to fracking. They claim their local politicians and a local media blackout are conspiring to let it get a foothold here before residents can grasp the environmental implications.
“A few people will make a lot of money in the short term,” predicts Tony Gerard, Shawnee College biology instructor and one of the local activists pushing the anti-fracking referendum in Tuesday’s Illinois elections. “We’ll be left with this environmental mess for our children to deal with.”
On the other side are local political and business leaders who say the struggling deep-south region of the state needs the economic boost they claim fracking will bring. They suspect there is a wider environmentalist agenda to impede landowners’ control over their own property.
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