How a small farming community kept its town from 'fading'

Aledo's renovated Carnegie Library is now a 
co-working tech hub. (Landmark Illinois photo)

The Great Recession left little Aledo, Illinois, hollowed out, but that's not the end of its story. The farming town with roughly 3,600 residents has made a surprising comeback with help from returning residents, a historical designation, the pandemic and a community that wouldn't allow its town to "fade," reports Rhonda Brooks of Farm Journal.

W. J. Albertson grew up in Aledo, which he recalled as a charming town with a bustling downtown. When Albertson and his wife returned to Aledo to help their aging parents in 2016-2017, the changes in the town were dramatic. He told Brooks, "We saw Aledo in a state that, you know, it hurt."

Location of Aledo, Ill.
(Wikipedia map)

After seeing his hometown's downturn, Albertson decided he wanted to help reverse Aledo's fortunes. Sometimes leading and sometimes following, Albertson became part of "a methodical effort … backed by city hall, nonprofit organizations, various companies and other local individuals — to make this little town 30 minutes south of the Quad Cities a vibrant community once again," Brooks explains.

Aledo's luck began to change in 2016 when its downtown was added to the National Park Service’s list of historic districts. Brooks reports, "About 80 buildings fell under the new designation, opening the door to federal and state rehabilitation tax credits."

When the town's historic Carnegie Library came up for auction, "Albertson and his partners moved quickly to acquire the building and lined it up as a tax-credit project," Brooks writes. "The plan was to show, in one visible example, that historic status and incentives could finance a modern use."

The Aledo Opera House has become the town's
'cultural anchor.' (Aledo Opera House photo) 

Once the pandemic hit, the community had fiber access installed in the renovated library, which helped the site evolve into a "job center and co-working hub, while providing a new reason to be downtown," Brooks reports.

As time has gone on, the community has renovated historic and non-historic buildings into apartment housing, quasi-bed-and-breakfast rooms and meeting venues. The Aledo Opera House was also renovated and reopened. Brooks adds, "The facility featured space for a stage, movie showings, and other community activities."

Albertson encourages small-town Americans to get involved in their communities. "He sums up Aledo’s guiding philosophy in a short formula that blends civic pride and faith," Brooks reports. He told her, "We kind of like to say, metaphorically, with our faith, broken things plus love equals restoration."

A small university town in southern Illinois 'leads the nation in out-of-state abortion patients'

Adobe Stock photo

Surrounded by farmland and the vast wooded expanses of the Shawnee National Forest, Carbondale, Illinois, has become a central hub for abortion access. 

The small-sized town, which is home to Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is within “driving distance of 10 states with abortion bans,” reports Elizabeth Williamson of The New York Times. “Last year, there were nearly 11,000 abortions in this city of 21,000.”

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, 14 states have banned the procedure. Those bans made “geography an all-important factor in access to the procedure,” Williamson explains. “And placed Carbondale, a liberal enclave in a deeply conservative region, in a complicated position.”

Unlike many of its neighboring states, abortion remains legal in Illinois. Carbondale's location near the southern tip of Illinois makes travel from states such as Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and even Louisiana possible for women seeking the procedure. Williamson writes, “Illinois now leads the nation in out-of-state abortion patients.”

Although many Carbondale residents support “its status as a safe harbor. . . the sheer number of abortions has also created some unease and worry about a backlash,” Williamson explains. 

One community member told Williamson she was concerned about the negative attention the high number of abortions could bring to the otherwise “quiet community.”

Carbondale has three women’s clinics that perform abortions, but two of the three provide other women’s health services. “Alamo Women’s Clinic only does abortions, both procedural and medication, all on-site,” Williamson reports. “Fewer than five percent of Alamo patients are from Illinois.”

Lincoln land in Land of Lincoln selling on Lincoln's birthday

https://www.agriculture.com/news/lincolns-land-to-sell-at-auction-feb-12?cid=338053&did=338053-20190208&mid=18396998908&utm_campaign=todays-news_newsletter&utm_content=020819&utm_medium=email&utm_source=agriculture.com

Small Illinois town feels betrayed by closure of prison, major employer in their underemployed town

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn

The people in the tiny rural town of Tamms, Ill., with 11 percent unemployment and its main source of jobs the state's maximum-security prison, just got word that the big-city governor they supported is mothballing the "supermax" facility. Jim Suhr of the Associated Press reports that the Southern Illinois town feels more than a bit betrayed by Gov. Pat Quinn's decision, made though lawmakers approved money to maintain the site, as well as a second facility in the north-central Illinois town of Dwight. Calling the closure “a profound and staggering loss,” the five-county Southern Five Regional Planning District and Development Commission forecast that eliminating the Tamms' prison’s 250 jobs ultimately would cost more than 200 more indirectly.

Quinn has offered to sell the 14-year-old facility to the federal government, but the pending closure has fostered ill will, "fanning the perception that Quinn and other Chicago powerbrokers don’t care much about folks outside the Windy City," writes Suhr. Illinois has been under pressure to close Tamms from activists who argue "its tough security measures are inhumane, and lawmakers have had to make a number of painful spending decisions given the state’s enormous budget crisis. Quinn aides say the Tamms prison is half-empty and three times as expensive to run as other facilities. Quinn signed the new state budget Saturday, saying he would use money from the shuttered prisons to restore funding to the Department of Children and Family Services, the agency in charge of maintaining child welfare in the state." In offering to see the prison to the federal government,  Quinn noted its isolated location and access to an interstate as selling points.

Rural life has been good to couple

Elza and Vivian Moses married in 1927, at ages 17 and 22 respectively, built a life together and after 80 years of marriage, still live in their rural Illinois home. Elza is 102 and Vivian is 97. Vivian says, "A neighbor told Grandma, 'That ain't gonna last.'" Leonid Gavrilov, a biodemographer at the University of Chicago's Center on Aging, used actuarial tables to estimate the chances of a couple living as long as the Moseses and also remaining married to be about 1 in 7 million, reports Colleen Mastony for the Chicago Tribune. (Photo by Michael Tercha, Chicago Tribune of Elza and Vivian Moses, 102 and 97)

They lived and farmed in Nebraska after they married. But unrelenting heat and drought sent the couple to Tiskilwa, Ill., population 780, about 50 miles north of Peoria, where they still live. Elza raised corn, soybeans, hogs and dairy cows. Vivian tended to the garden, the house and their five daughters, writes Mastony. "For both of them, I think it was their first love," says daughter Judy Speers, 65. "They always totally relied on each other. And to this day they still do."


A North Carolina couple who marked their 86th anniversary in May hold the record for the longest marriage. "But the Moseses' longevity has made them celebrated figures in Tiskilwa and beyond. ... Local schoolchildren sent more than 100 cards for Elza's birthday," writes Mastony.

Both of them are in good health, though Elza has some hearing loss and Vivian has a sore shoulder. They agree that doing things together has kept their marriage strong. She writes birthday cards to every child, grandchild (nine), great-grandchild (28) and great-great-grandchild (14, with four on the way); he takes the cards to the mailbox. Vivian turns to Elza and asks, "Would you know what to do without me?" "I'd be completely lost," he says.(Read more)

Non-profit opens a statehouse bureau in Illinois

As statehouse coverage continues to dwindle around the country, a non-profit organization has opened a bureau in the state capital of Illinois. The Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity will publish online at http://www.illinoisstatehousenews.com/, Bernard Schoenburg of the State Journal-Register in Springfield reports. Scott Reeder, who had been Statehouse bureau chief for Small Newspaper Group for a decade, will be managing editor for the three-person staff.

The Franklin Center, which believes new technology can make government more transparent, is offering its content free to other news outlets via a Web site. "I think journalism is really radically changing, both as our business model changes and our format for presenting the news changes," Reeder told Schoenburg. "This offers an opportunity to present the news in a variety of formats, and I find that very exciting." The group will operate from a rented space in a private building instead of the Capitol's suite of media offices because the Franklin Center failed to get voted in as a member of the Illinois Legislative Correspondents Association this summer.

"A key gateway issue for membership is whether you’re an established news organization, and they have not shown us a track record," ILCA President Ray Long of the Chicago Tribune told Schoenburg. "They’re free to reapply." The Republican background of Franklin Center President Jason Stverak has also been questioned. "ABC News can’t hide the fact that the host of their Sunday morning news program, George Stephanopoulos, is a former senior official with the Clinton administration as well as a senior member of his presidential campaigns," Stverak told Schoenberg in an e-mail. "ABC news as well as Franklin Center shouldn’t be judged by the work history of their staff, but by the content they are producing." (Read more)

Thieves repeatedly steal from town's road-salt pile

Last month, The Rural Blog posted a story about one city's solution to road salt shortages and higher salt prices. But Galena, Ill., in the state's northwest corner, is finding that shortages and higher costs are not the only threat to the city's salt supply.

"The city seems to have missed three important potential sources of loss: a $131 per ton price on salt; pickup trucks; and larcenous people," writes Richard Clark of The Galena Gazette. He reports that, on at least three occasions, salt has been stolen from the town's distribution center. Each time, about a "small pickup truck load" of salt went missing. The price on road salt is currently around $131 per ton, making the loss fairly significant for the town. (Read more)

Post profile touches on Obama's rural experiences

While Barack Obama has established a lead in the race for president, it remains to be seen whether this fundamentally urban candidate can improve his standing with rural voters, who favor John McCain. Some answers may be suggested in The Washington Post this morning, in Eli Saslow's story about Obama as a state senator in the Illinois state capital, "a sophisticated urbanite living in a town built on cornfields," as Saslow writes. The story, headlined "From Outsider to Politician," is mainly about Obama's vivid tussles with other African American senators from Chicago, but includes this rural vignette:

Obama needed allies to make headway in a place like this, so he set out to find some. A group of Springfield political aides and lobbyists invited him to join their poker game, a low-stakes gathering attended by three other senators. On a weeknight in April 1996, Obama met the other players in a private room at a local country club. Big-screen TVs showed a Chicago Bulls game, and cigar smoke clouded the air.

His arrival surprised the other senators at the table. Jacobs, Terry Link and Larry Walsh -- all white Democrats, all older than 50, all from rural parts of the state -- would become Obama's closest friends in Springfield, but they viewed his initial arrival as the intrusion of an outsider. Jacobs was a loudmouth from the Iowa border, a self-described "backroom dinosaur" famous for his love of gambling. Walsh was a farmer from Elmwood who sometimes snuck out of session for a hot toddy. Link was a forklift business owner who narrowly graduated from high school.

As the young black senator from Chicago -- an Ivy Leaguer, a law professor -- bought into the poker game for $100 and lit a cigarette, Jacobs wondered: "What could he have in common with us?"

"It wasn't the most obvious fit," Jacobs said. "You've got two fat guys, a medium-heavy guy and then Obama. On the surface, there's not a lot that we shared."

Obama folded frequently during the games, preferring to watch the action unfold until he could pounce with the occasional great hand. He filled the long gaps in between by seeking advice from his playing partners about balancing work and family, crafting legislation and aligning with Republicans. Even as Obama routinely took their money, the other players regarded him as naive but genuine. In various capacities, Link, Walsh and Jacobs all considered themselves Obama's mentors.
Obama was never a big drinker, but he faithfully brought along a six-pack of beer and downed a couple. He smoked and pitched in for midnight pizza. The poker game eventually migrated to Link's house and became the one social staple on Obama's schedule. The Committee Meeting, Obama called it -- and the appointment stood for eight years. His poker-mates sometimes teased him for becoming "one of the good ol' boys."

As a Democrat in a legislature controlled by Republicans, Obama had lots of free time in Springfield, and used it to take up golf. "After his first year in Springfield, Obama took a golf trip to southern Illinois with his top adviser, Dan Shomon," Saslow reports. "Obama wanted to test how rural voters would respond to a black man, because he already had designs on a run for statewide office. Shomon coached him: Order regular mustard instead of Dijon; wear simple golf shirts instead of fancy button-downs. Obama returned from the trip convinced he could assimilate." (Read more)

Illinois papers closing, cutting statehouse bureaus

Financial pressures on the newspaper industry continue to shrink statehouse news bureaus that have long brought localized and occasionally groundbreaking coverage to their readers, many of them rural.

The latest example is the Rockford Register Star, which closed its Springfield bureau on Monday, "dumping bureau chief Aaron Chambers, who is generally considered one of the best reporters under the dome," Rich Miller writes on The Capitol Fax Blog.

“Frankly, I made a choice between the bureau in Springfield and local news in the Rock River Valley,” the paper's home base, Executive Editor Linda Grist Cunningham said. “It’s a loss, but losing another local reporter would have been worse.” The paper, which at last report had a circulation of 56,000, was bought by now-troubled GateHouse Media from Gannett Co. Inc. in April 2007. GateHouse also owns the State Journal-Register in Springfield, but the Rockford paper's story made no mention of using its sister paper for statehouse stories.

Miller adds on the blog, "The Champaign News-Gazette closed its bureau earlier this year, putting Kate Clements Cohorst out of a job. The [Chicago] Tribune eliminated one of its Statehouse positions on Friday, laying off the incredibly hard-working Jeff Meitrodt, who was recruited from New Orleans not long ago. And, as of yet, the AP has not filled the vacancy created when Ryan Keith was hired by the State Journal-Register. So, that’s two bureaus and four reporting slots gone from the Statehouse this year alone, and it’s only August." Miller's post had 59 comments as of this posting. (Read more)

St. Louis paper notes Ky. and Okla. use databases to track purchases of key meth ingredients

Pharmacies have been the first line of defense when it comes to stopping the production of methamphetamine, with many states passing laws regulating the purchase of a key ingredient, the cold medicine pseudoephedrine. In many states, purchases and buyers are logged at pharmacies, but a lack of oversight of such logs has meant they often provide little help to law enforcement.

In Kentucky and Oklahoma, however, pharmacies and police have turned those logs into online databases that have prevented illegal sales as well as led to meth lab busts. Such systems offer a model for Illinois and Missouri, which led the nation in meth busts with 1,189 — twice as many as any other state — last year, reports Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

In Laurel County, Kentucky, police have been using MethCheck software for the past two years. (P-D photo by J.B. Forbes shows Detective Brian Lewis talking with pharmacists in the county about possible illegal purchases of pseudoephedrine.) "In the first year of using the program, the number of labs the squad seized more than quadrupled," Byers writes. "Using federal and state money, Kentucky plans to spend about $500,000 to link its 1,290 pharmacies statewide in June." The linking of pharmacies is the key, because it means meth producers can't just go from store to store, buying pseudoephedrine and signing logs that remain isolated. A similar system already is in place in Oklahoma, where officials said the database linking the state's 1,485 pharmacies has helped reduce the number of confirmed meth labs by 92 percent since 2005. "You're basically putting the 'Welcome' mat out for meth cooks to come to your state if you don't have a database," Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics spokesman Mark Woodward told Byers.

In Missouri, lawmakers have passed bills to create a system modeled after Oklahoma's, but the necessary funding won't be available until next year. In the meantime, some counties are pursuing grants to establish their own databases now. Oregon, however, has taken an alternative approach by making pseudoephedrine a prescription drug, a move the state said makes expensive databases unnecessary. (Read more) As we noted last week, meth cooks can find other ways of securing key ingredients, such as stealing from farms.

Illinois newspapers prevail over state high school athletic association in deal over photo sales

Finally, the Illinois Press Association and the Illinois High School Association have ended their year-long fight over rights to sell photographs taken at high-school athletic competitions. A court settlement has ended the dispute, which had moved from the sidelines of the state's football title games to the state capitol, reports Doug Finke of the State Journal-Register in Springfield.

"The pact between the IHSA and the Illinois Press Association gives newspaper photographers full access to sporting events and does not restrict what they do with the photos," Finke writes. "As part of the agreement, the IPA agreed to drop a lawsuit against the IHSA and no longer pursue legislation in the General Assembly to bar the IHSA from granting a private company the sole right to sell photos taken at championship high school sporting events. " (Read more)

Citing climate change and costs, feds suspend loans for rural electric cooperatives' coal-fired plants

Concerns over climate change, and the prospect of limits on greenhouse gases, recently prompted major banks to add to stricter emissions standards to any financing for coal-fired power plants. Now those same worries are complicating public financing for rural electric cooperatives, which get 80 percent of their power from coal.

"The federal government is suspending a major loan program for coal-fired power plants in rural communities, saying the uncertainties of climate change and rising construction costs make the loans too risky," reports Matthew Brown of The Associated Press.

Since 2001, $1.3 billion in loans had been issued for new plant construction, but "none will be issued this year and likely none in 2009, James Newby, assistant administrator for the Rural Utilities Service, a branch of the Department of Agriculture, said Tuesday," Brown writes. Projects in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri had been seeking a total of $1.3 billion in loans at the time of the suspension. (Read more) We reported on cancellation of the Missouri plant yesterday.

UPDATE, March 13: Steven Mufson of The Washington Post catches up, and expands, on the story. To read his report, click here.

Road salt running low in Midwest and New England

It's been a rough winter for parts of the Midwest and New England, and those storms have strained local supplies of road salt, reports The New York Times."With so many municipalities in need of salt, suppliers cannot ship it out quickly enough," Katie Zezima writes. "Public works departments are left waiting for days or weeks to receive their orders."

Those in charge of snow removal and road safety, such as Dennis Lutz, the director of public works for Essex, Vt., (in a Times photo by Karen Pike), have been scrambling to keep their supplies up. The crunch has forced them to buy from smaller suppliers at higher prices. Zezima reports that Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, has been spending more than $66 per ton of salt, up from the $39.29 the county usually pays. The county "is now limiting salt use to hills, curves and intersections," Zezima writes. "The county is putting sand on roads, but some say it is less effective than salt." (Read more)

Some Wisconsin municipalities are using beet juice to thaw roads instead of salt, reports The Associated Press. Mike Hoeft of The Green Bay Press-Gazette reports that neighboring Ashwaubenon has stopped spreading salt on secondary roads and that many rural areas will get sand instead of salt. Around Chicago, suburbs are rationing salt, too, making for long commutes into the city on icy roads, reports The Chicago Tribune. The Tribune also notes that deliveries of more salt are being slowed thanks to ice jams stalling salt barges on the Illinois River.

Disputes over photography at high-school athletic events continue, even at cheerleading contest

For the past few months, the Illinois High School Association and the Illinois Press Association have battled in court and athletic venues over who has the right to shoot — and then sell — photos of high-school athletic events. That even includes cheerleading competitions, which are just the latest front in the fight -- which has also flared in other states.

At issue is the contract IHSA signed in 2001 with VIP, a Wisconsin-based photography company. The firm gets exclusive rights for sale of photos and agrees to shoot all events — not just football and basketball, but competitions such as bowling and chess, which newspapers are unlikely to cover. IHSA does not get a cut of the photo sales, but no longer has to hire photographers. To protect VIP's exclusivity, IHSA has barred newspaper photographers from events unless they sign a deal saying they won't sell images they capture.

"I don’t think I’ve seen a single issue that has inflamed the passions of my members more than this one has,” David Bennett, executive director of the IPA, told Michael Miner of the Chicago Reader. “Most see it as an example of a quasi-government agency trying to tell them how to run their product. This is unbelievable. Government can’t do this! That’s blatantly unconstitutional. There’s no backing down from this one now. The toothpaste is out of the tube.”

Last Saturday, IHSA barred Carlos Miranda, a photographer from The Pantagraph of Bloomington from the sidelines of the state's cheerleading competition when he refused to promise not to sell reprints. He bought a ticket and shot from the stands instead, and reporter Edith Brady-Lunny wrote an article on the dispute for the paper's Sunday edition. The fight has moved to the statehouse, too. "With the case still in court, late last month state representative Joseph Lyons, a Chicago Democrat, introduced a bill intended to make the IHSA’s position illegal," Miner writes. (Read more)

States prepare new pitches for emissions-free generating plant orginally planned for Illinios

After last week's announcement that the U.S. Department of Energy had withdrawn its funding support for a zero-emissions coal plant near Mattoon, Ill., several states have made plays to become the home for the $1.8 billion FutureGen Industrial Alliance Inc. plant (at left in a DOE rendering). Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear has "put together a team of economic and energy staffers to help develop proposals aimed at bringing a FutureGen project to Kentucky," reports Roger Alford for The Associated Press.

Kentucky failed in its original bid to land the plant, "which would convert coal to clean-burning synthetic gas and pump the carbon dioxide emissions into the ground rather than releasing them into the atmosphere," Alford writes. State lawmakers passed incentives for such plants last summer, and want to capitalize on them if the Illinois plant is not built. "That, along with our vast natural resources, clearly makes Kentucky more ready than ever to take advantage of future federal investments in innovative energy development," Beshear said. (Read more)

On Wednesday, FutureGen CEO Mike Mudd said the group of coal and utility companies would work with the White House and Congress to keep the plant in Mattoon, AP reports. On Capitol Hill, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman fielded questioning about the DOE's decisions to withdraw funding. (Read more)

Bill would ban transport, sale, purchase, donation of horses for slaughter for human consumption

Since October, the closure of horse slaughterhouses in the U.S. has been blamed for a crisis in care for many horses, along with drought, amateur breeding and other factors. But opponents of killing horses for meat anywhere are pressing their case in Congress, on the heels of an initial legislative victory, reports the Washington bureau of The Courier-Journal.

"Buried deep within the government spending bill Congress passed last month is a provision that effectively bans horse slaughter in the United States. The measure bars the U.S. Department of Agriculture from collecting fees to pay for horse meat inspections, without which slaughter can't legally continue," James R. Carroll writes.

Now a sponsor of that measure has "legislation that would ban the transport, sale, purchase or donation of horses to be slaughtered for human consumption. The idea would be to permanently prohibit the practice nationwide and also prevent horses from being taken to other countries for slaughter." Republican Rep. Ed Whitfield of Western Kentucky's 1st District told Carroll, "The problem now is that people are moving more of the horses to Mexico, where the slaughter process is even worse than it was in the U.S." The bill's other primary co-sponsor is Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. The Senate also has a bill.

Carroll reports, "Some agriculture organizations, like the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, worry that banning horse slaughter is the first step in animal activists' plans to outlaw the processing of other meat. The bill is supported by the Humane Society of the United States, which "released a video report in September that it prepared on the horse slaughter industry in Mexico." (Read more)

Illinois farmers blocking completion of oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast

In the race to transport oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, some rural Illinois farmers have become major players. Partnering with Exxon Mobil, the Canadian firm Enbridge is working to finish a pipeline from Alberta to Texas before anyone else does, but those farmers are blocking the 175-mile missing piece, reports Kari Lydersen of The Washington Post (which produced the graphic). The U.S. gets most of its foreign oil from Canada, which shipped in 1,919,000 barrels of oil per day in November, compared to 1,530,000 barrels per day from Saudia Arabia. (For data from the Energy Information Administration, go here.)

"Farmers said they are concerned about a fire along an Enbridge pipeline in Minnesota that killed two welders in November and incidents on Enbridge pipelines in Wisconsin, including a 126,000-gallon spill in February that contaminated the water table," Lydersen writes. "They also worry that the pipeline would interfere with the underground tile drainage system needed to keep their once-swampy land farmable." Some also note that the pipeline is designed for exporting oil to other countries.

Enbridge has offered farmers fair market value — plus fees for crop loss and soil damage —to use a 120-foot wide strip of their land to make way for the 36-inch diameter pipeline. David Sykuta, executive director of the Illinois Petroleum Council, told Lydersen the $350 million project was "absolutely vital" to the nation's oil economy. (Read more)

Coal and electric industries pick Mattoon, Ill., for zero-emissions coal plant; Energy Dept. demurs

A coal-fired power plant with zero emissions -- even of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming -- will be built near the east-central Illinois town of Mattoon, it was announced today -- in many ways, including this marquee in Mattoon, as pictured by the Journal Gazette and Times Courier of Charleston.

The FutureGen Industrial Alliance Inc., a non-profit industrial consortium representing the coal and power industries, is supposed to build the plant over the next 10 years with support from the U.S. Department of Energy. However, a DOE official "said Tuesday that the federal government wants a reassessment of the FutureGen design due to escalating costs," reports Herb Meeker of the JG-TC. "DOE officials said last week that the FutureGen Alliance decided on its own to move ahead with its Tuesday announcement of Mattoon as the plant’s site, apparently before cost overrun issues were settled, according to one informed source. Meeker adds, "U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., believes renewed negotiations between DOE and FutureGen Alliance officials early next year can hammer out agreement on curtailing costs." (Read more)

The other finalists were sites near Tuscola, Ill., 25 miles north of Mattoon, and two in Texas: Odessa in the west and Jewett in the east. Robert J. Finley, director of the Energy and Earth Resources Center of the Illinois State Geological Survey, told Nathaniel West of the Charleston newspaper that the underground rock formations at the site were better suited to storing carbon dioxide than those in Texas, where the formations have been punctured by oil and gas drilling. Finley once worked for the Geological Survey of Texas, West notes. (Read more) (Encarta map) For DOE's Web site about the project, click here.

Illinois High School Association sues Illinois Press Association, newspapers, over athletic photos

The Illinois High School Association and the Illinois Press Association have been fighting over photo rights for high school championship events for the past few months. In November, the IPA sued the the IHSA over a new policy that restricted the rights of newspapers to sell photographs taken at championship events. A few weeks later, we wrote that photographers from five newspapers had been barred from the state's football title games by the IHSA. Last week, the IHSA filed a counter suit against the IPA, reports the National Press Photographers Association.

"The IHSA has filed a counter suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court in Springfield asking a judge to declare that IHSA has the exclusive right to sell photographs taken at high school sporting events, and the right to impose limits on how newspapers use photographs, and for permission to restrict newspapers' access to IHSA games if editors and publishers fail to comply with IHSA polices," NPPA reports.

The counter suit names IPA, the Journal Star in Peoria, The State Register-Journal in Springfield, and The Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, and asks for at least $50,000 in damage payments. (Read more)

Photographers from five newspapers barred from high school football title games in Illinois

A few weeks ago, we reported a lawsuit filed by the Illinois Press Association and others challenging new credential policies limiting secondary use of sports photos taken at high school athletic events, a recent issue in several states. The IPA withdrew its suit on Nov. 16 after a compromise was struck with the Illinois High School Association for media access at the state's football championships. But when photographers from five newspapers showed up in Champaign to cover the games this weekend, IHSA officials told them to stay out, the National Press Photographers Association reports. These were the five newspapers that refused to sign an agreement pledging not to sell images from IHSA events, reports The Pantagraph of Bloomington.

"Staff photographers from The Pantagraph and four other newspapers were told by IHSA officials that their newspapers had violated the association's policy regarding secondary sales of images from state tournament events, and therefore they were banned from having access to the field," NPPA reports. (Read more) The other newspapers barred were the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, the Northwest Herald of Crystal Lake, the State Journal-Register of Springfield and the Peoria Journal Star. The IHSA said the newspapers were informed ahead of time about the ban, but a report from The Daily Herald said the newspaper did not receive such notification. The article went on to ask readers, parents and fans to send their photos to The Daily Herald.

The Panatagraph had come to cover Bloomington’s Central Catholic High School in the Class 4A title game, and its Web site includes a photo gallery from that game. Its story on the IHSA ban does not say how the paper's photographer gained field access. For a story by Steve Bauer of The News-Gazette of Champaign, click here.

IPA attorney Don Craven told the Pantagraph that IHSA officials “want to use the market that community newspapers have built over the last decades on high school sports and use it for their own benefit. The thought of anybody controlling the use of a newspaper’s photographs — other than the newspapers themselves — is not something that Illinois newspapers are willing to put up with.” For the IPA's detailed take on the issue, click here.

IHSA Executive Director Marty Hickman replied, While the Illinois Press Association has indicated its willingness to compromise on this matter, its actions have spoken much louder than its words. We asked the IPA to have its members refrain from selling photos of our events while we continued to work to resolve this issue. We presented the IPA with a proposal nearly two weeks ago and they have yet to respond.” (Read more)

One newspaper finessed the issue. See its comment below.