urgent request from Sandra Steingraber

Dear Friends and Neighbors,   We can sign even if we don't belong to a certain group. Bonita Friends in the Frac World,       Below is an urgent request from Sandra Steingraber early this morning (Monday) to help stop the legislation in Illinois that would open up that state for hydraulic fracking.       Today, she is asking her allies from Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota to “sign” the letter below.  If you are willing to do so, please send your name, town and state, as well as the name of the anti-frac sand group you’re a member of, to Pat Popple.   Pat’s e-mail is    Sunnyday5@charter.net.     Here is an example:  Doug Nopar, Winona, MN, Winona Area Citizens Concerned About Silica Mining (CASM)    Pat will add your name and group to the list. Again, please act today, as the Illinois legislature’s vote is imminent.     Certainly, circulate to your lists.      Thanks much.  Hope you have a relaxing rest of the day. Doug Dear Members of the Illinois General Assembly,  With great alarm, we the undersigned, your neighbors in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, are watching as the Illinois General Assembly considers a regulatory bill that would serve to open your state up to large-scale, high volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Although we do not live atop oil- or gas-containing shale, we do live in communities situated atop vast deposits of silica sand, which are a necessary ingredient in the fracking process. (Prized for its unsurpassed strength, silica sand is used to prop open the cracks so created when high volumes of high pressure water and chemicals fracture the shale. With the cracks held open by grains of sand, the gas can flow out.) Silica sand is the agent of fracking, and it is a limiting agent. The gas and oil industry go to great lengths to obtain sufficient quantities. The sand rush that accompanies the gas rush is, in our experience, a direct menace to our communities.  We have suffered greatly from the industrial strip-mining and processing of silica sand that has been the direct consequence of the ongoing shale gas boom in this nation. Our communities, our land, and our health are literally being destroyed by it. WE BEG YOU TO DECLARE A MORATORIUM ON FRACKING IN ILLINOIS, AS WE ARE SURE, SHOULD YOU MOVE FORWARD WITH THIS REGULATORY BILL AND OPEN YOUR STATE TO LARGE-SCALE FRACKING, THAT THE DEMAND FOR FRAC SAND WILL INCREASE FURTHER, ALONG WITH THE PRICE, AND THUS ALONG WITH THE PRESSURE ON OUR OWN POLITICAL LEADERS TO ESCALATE FURTHER THE DEVASTATING PRACTICE OF FRAC SAND MINING AND PROCESSING.  While sand mining has long been part of our local economies, we have never before witnessed it at this scale, scope, and intensity. The demand for frac sand is literally changing the contours of our surroundings. The hills themselves are vanishing.  With this letter, we also bring direct knowledge to the people and legislators of Illinois about sand mining, which will almost certainly take place along your own rivers and bluffs should you create a permissive environment for the oil and gas industry. Your regulations for fracking do not extend to the attendant process of frac sand mining—with which there are associated many dangers.  First, industrial strip mining for frac sand threatens our ground- and surface water supplies. Strip mining for frac sand turns rural areas into vast moonscapes. Erosion caused by physical disturbance of the land itself as well as the migration of pollutants from the chemical processing of the sand pollute our aquifers. Also, high-capacity wells used by the mine threaten to deplete ground and surface water that we need for drinking, farming, and recreation.  Second, frac sand mining is damaging the quality of our air. Fleets of diesel trucks run constantly on rural roads, as a single mine and processing plant is serviced by hundreds of truck trips per day. Even worse is silica dust, which is both a proven lung carcinogen and a cause of the disabling and often fatal disease, silicosis Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources admits that airborne silica is a carcinogen but does not require monitoring for it in our communities. Silica dust from freshly fractured sand formations is more toxic than silica found in naturally weathered soil.  Third, massive sand mining operations are jeopardizing wildlife habitat and natural resources. Clear-cutting, open-pit mining, and hilltop removal are all part of frac sand mining. As hills and bluffs are  loaded into trucks and hauled away, our landscape is disappearing, and the water cycle itself is being altered. Of course, our hills and the sand desposits of which they are made are not replaceable.  Fourth, the dramatic increase in heavy truck traffic make safety and traffic congestion a huge problem. Also, the heavy hauling causes road damage, interferes with tourism and recreation, and generates costs  for local taxpayers. The unrelenting noise of blasting, traffic, rail  cars, and vibrations are also health threat.  Fifth, our property values are sinking. All the mines, haul routes, processing plants, and rail spurs can reduce our property values by 30 percent. Meanwhile, this industry provides us few local jobs, even as it destroys farmland.  As your neighbors, we stand together with citizens in your great state of Illinois who also do not want to an economy dependent on the boom and bust cycle of extractive mining and drilling. The jobs provided by both frack sand mining and horizontal fracking are temporary and toxic. We invite you to visit our altered communities and tour our sand mines. Let us show you the open trucks and barges, with silica dust flying off  them into our neighborhoods. We will gladly share information with you. We beg you, however, to declare a moratorium on fracking until you do.  Sincerely,