Sierra Club to offer baseline water testing to landowners in southeastern Illinois

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[High-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for oil and gas may be coming to Illinois this year.

Drinking water contamination has occurred in other states where fracking has taken place, according to the Sierra Club's Shawnee Group, so the organization is offering baseline water testing to landowners who have their own wells in the counties of Wayne, Hamilton, White and Saline, where fracking is expected to begin sometime this summer.

The testing will take place at two scheduled events. The first event will take place from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. June 16 at the Harrisburg Township Park, Pallister Shelter. The second event will be from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. June 23 at the gazebo on Main Street in Wayne City.

Interested participants must contact the Sierra Club beforehand in order to receive instructions on how to properly obtain a water sample. The samples can then be brought to either of the events for testing. Samples collected without following proper protocol will not be accepted.

Interested persons may contact Barb McKasson at babitaji@aol.com or Terri Treacy at 618-521-1030 for details on obtaining protocol instructions. Treacy would not say what the specific protocol is for collecting water samples and asked people to contact her for further information.

She did say they will be using their own equipment onsite to test the water samples and plan to continue the testing to see if there are any significant changes.

"We hope to be able to continue baseline testing on a quarterly basis," said Treacy.

According to the release, fracking is a process in which 2 to 7 million gallons of water, tons of sand and numerous chemicals are injected into an oil or gas well at high pressure to create fractures deep into the shale rock to release oil and gas deposits.

Using a conductivity probe, the water tests will determine the amount of salts in water samples, thereby establishing a baseline for each water well location. Wells will continue to be monitored for significant changes in conductivity, an indication that a well may be impacted by spills or leaks from fracking activities, according to the Sierra Club.