Illinois Environmental Council (IEC)

🎦: Illinois’ Looming Abandoned Oil Well Crisis
🗓️: Wednesday, March 4

⏰: 12:00 - 1:00 pm

📍: Zoom

🎟️ Register here: zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Understanding and addressing this environmental & financial issue is critical, so we invite you to join our Illinois’ Looming Abandoned Oil Well Crisis webinar. The discussion will focus on the report's key findings, steps Illinois can take to tackle this looming issue, and how you can get involved.

‼️ A new report from the Northwestern Environmental Advocacy Center and ClientEarth USA has identified a major, but little-known crisis plaguing Illinois: a potential $1 billion oil well cleanup problem.

Additional budget priorities include:
🔌 $803M appropriated for consumer utility bill credits through the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA), administered by the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity
🚌 $508M to support downstate public transit, an increase of $20 million from FY26.

Two raccoons peek out from a hole in a tree.

Gov. Pritzker's proposal includes funding aimed at cutting climate pollution, expanding clean energy, and helping communities lower energy costs across the state. ⚡️🌿

🔎 Curious about what else is in the proposal?

The Environmental Impacts of the Illinois Budget (FY2027) What impact will the new Illinois budget have on environmental priorities? Find out how it will impact clean water, open space, energy, and more.

Is Illinois funding the environment? Gov. Pritzker released his FY27 budget proposal. Our team took a close look at what it means for climate and conservation in Illinois.

Take a look at our analysis to find out which priorities made the cut: ilenviro.org/the-environm...

⚠️ Take action and tell your legislators to protect Illinois communities from dangerous pesticide exposure: act.ilenviro.org/a/strengthen...

📰 Kim Erndt-Pitcher (Prairie Rivers Network) coined chemical trespass for Illinois Times and Investigate Midwest article: www.illinoistimes.com/news/this-is...

✴️ New legislation seeks to change this by requiring advance notice before pesticide applications near schools and parks. HB1596 won’t ban pesticides or target small residential use, but it will give communities time to move kids indoors and reduce risk.

Agricultural groups are wanting newer and better ways to kill weeds, but it’s time we ensure that playgrounds, schools, and parks receive advanced notice of pesticide application for the health of our farmers, communities, and environment.

Children and families often have no warning before pesticides are applied near schools and parks, increasing the risk of exposure. In fact, some of the most volatile pesticides remain legal, despite their well-documented dangers.

Studies have linked dicamba exposure to increased cancer risk, and 2,4-D to hormone disruption affecting growth, fertility, and reproduction. These chemicals spread through air, across fence posts, and into communities.

🍂 Across Illinois, trees, flowers, and native plants are showing damage from herbicide drift — a well-documented phenomenon where weedkillers travel far beyond where they’re sprayed.

Big Tech’s development shouldn’t come at your expense. The POWER Act will:
✔ Make data centers bring their own new clean energy
✔ They pay for their own grid upgrades
✔ Communities get pollution protections

⚡ Learn more: ilenviro.org/data-centers...

@ilenviro.bsky.social

💐 Want to make your love for Illinois’ environment official? 💝

Become an IEC member today: give.ilenviro.org/a/2026member... ✨

📰 Jonathan Bullington for @chicagotribune.com: “At one time, Illinois was a top oil producer. Today, that legacy is a $160M problem.”

State lawmakers have recently doubled per-well bonding requirements and removed certain caps, but experts say the changes still fall short of actual plugging costs. Without structural fixes, Illinois risks perpetuating a system where abandoned wells will likely become public burdens.

✴️ Deeper reforms are needed: better tracking of production data, stronger bonding requirements to ensure companies can pay for cleanup, limits on wells sitting indefinitely in “temporary abandonment,” and potentially a tax on oil production to fund remediation.

For decades, Illinois has collected fees from oil operators intended to fund well plugging and land restoration, but public records and investigations suggest that much of that money has been diverted or insufficiently tracked, while the number of wells needing attention has barely budged.

Farmers describe crop losses from salt-damaged soil and worry about contaminants migrating into nearby creeks and aquifers that supply drinking water. Methane emissions also contribute to climate change, adding another layer of harm from infrastructure that is no longer in operation.

Across southern Illinois, nearly 4,000+ abandoned oil & gas wells, many drilled more 100 years ago, remain unplugged with their original operators long gone or bankrupt. Left unsealed, these wells leak brine, oil, benzene, methane, and other pollutants into groundwater, farmland, and the atmosphere.

🛢️ Oil companies drilled without restraint. Now, taxpayers may foot the cleanup bill.
Illinois was once a titan of American oil production, with derricks crowding the horizon. Today, that legacy lingers in rusted pipes, contaminated soil, and a mounting $160 million cleanup bill.

Tell Congress: Hold Trump’s EPA Accountable! Add your name now >>

✴️ Take action with @LCVoters here: give.lcv.org/a/2026febnma...

📂 Source: LCV Explainer “Lee Zeldin’s EPA Endangerment Finding Repeal: What it Means for Clean Air and the Climate”

While courts have previously affirmed EPA’s responsibility to regulate climate pollution and legal challenges to any repeal are likely, dismantling the foundational safeguard for climate pollution would make it harder to protect air, stabilize energy costs, and confront the growing climate crisis.

At a time when climate-driven disasters are becoming more frequent and costly, weakening federal authority to regulate greenhouse gases risks higher long-term economic, environmental, and public health costs.

🏭 communities located near highways and industrial corridors, disproportionately located in BIPOC and low-income neighborhoods, would bear the brunt of worsening air pollution and health impacts, and

🧪 it would signal a retreat from science-based policymaking in favor of big polluters' greed...

Without the Endangerment Finding:

🌫️ the EPA would have far less power to curb pollution that drives climate change and damages air quality,

🚙 it opens the door to rolling back vehicle pollution standards, resulting in dirtier air, higher gas consumption, and ⬆️ costs for drivers,

That gave the EPA clear authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate climate pollution from transportation, power plants, and other sources.

Efforts by USEPA Admin Lee Zeldin to repeal this finding would undermine one of the fed gov’s most important legal tools for limiting harmful emissions.

⚠️ ICYMI: The legal backbone of U.S. EPA climate protections is under attack.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding established, based on overwhelming scientific evidence, that greenhouse gas emissions threaten public health and welfare.

Protect our water, energy, and ratepayers from data center harms! Urge your legislators in the Illinois General Assembly to co-sponsor and vote “yes” on the POWER Act (SB4016/HB5513) this spring to protect our water, energy, and ratepayers.

We can let data centers drive up costs, strain our water supplies, and threaten our clean energy goals, or we can set fair rules that welcome growth while protecting consumers and communities.

⚠️ Take action: urge your legislators to support the POWER Act here: act.ilenviro.org/a/poweract

💰 Energy affordability isn't an abstract issue. It's real life for millions of Illinoisans who are working hard and still falling behind. In fact, one of the biggest drivers of rising electricity costs has little to do with your energy use – and everything to do with Big Tech and their data centers.