WilliamOnWarMemorial

They say it’s about safe water. But it’s not.

This week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed Senate Bill 2266 into law, hailed with flashy headlines and a stock photo of a faucet with clean running tap water to falsely make you believe he just saved your stinky tap water in Downstate Illinois. But look closer. The law doesn’t protect families drinking municipal toxic sludge water in Peoria IL or Decatur IL. It doesn't help the poisoned kids in Cairo or the rust-soaked renters in East St. Louis.

What did Governor Pritzker actually do with this Bill?

Governor Pritzker just signed a Bill with a feel-good headline: “Safe Drinking Water Standards Signed Into Law.” But if you're picturing kids in Peoria, Cahokia, or East St. Louis finally sipping clean, lead-free water—you've been had. This Bill is political sleight-of-hand, designed to look like progress while sacrificing the truly vulnerable to protect the bureaucrats, his cronies and regulatory cowards who let this crisis fester.

This Bill targets Christian church congregations, diners, daycares, schools, campgrounds, roadside cafés still surviving on well water in unincorporated zones across the State of Illinois. It gives the Illinois Department of Public Health sweeping powers to fine “non-community water systems” — meaning anyone who doesn't pay a utility company and dares to get their own water.

So while Peoria tap water still ranks among the worst in Illinois with 48 known contaminants, and is cracking people’s skin open with chloramine hell soup, Pritzker isn’t cleaning up that problem. He’s cracking down on Christians and Ma and Pop cafes in rural – and largely Republican – Downstate Illinois; and leaving Peoria’s uranium-spiked  and VOC-stew water untouched, untested and still clogging the old lead pipes like its a backroom favor to the nearest municipal water company.  Because it is. 

And why? Because the federal government was about to strip Illinois of its water oversight powers for non-compliance. This Bill wasn't a bold State initiative to mandate immediate clean tap water now in Illinois. It was a panic compliance move to avoid federal takeover and keep corruption tucked safely inside Springfield. Pritzker just played end-round-around and is trying to out-maneuver the Feds with this Bill. And the tell is: this Bill (unlike most others signed in the Summer and don’t go into effect until the following January) – takes effect immediately.  As such, Governor Pritzker just turned safe drinking water in Downstate Illinois into a jurisdictional dodge and stated the following loud and clear for us all to hear: 

Willow Knolls? Oh that’s community water – not covered by this law. 

Peoria municipal lines? Not our department. 

But that one Christian teacher’s retreat center between Washington and Metamora IL? We’re gonna fine the last penny out of them here in Illinois!  

Let that sink in.

What the Bill Actually Does:

• Targets private well-water systems at local churches, diners, schools – largely in rural, Republican areas of Christian faith in Illinois;
• Allows the IL Dept. of Public Health to issue civil penalties (aka $$$ hefty fines) for violations. This means he’s ELEVATING the very agency that let this water crisis happen in Illinois to broader enforcement power over Republican Christians he doesn’t like; 
• Assigns the Illinois Emergency Management Agency — the one still MIA for tornado victims — as lead clean water enforcer in Illinois to come for Christian dollars and Mom and Pop cafes. They now have the right to impose civil fines and penalties on the Christian churches with a water hose;
• Applies zero pressure to fix or enforce quality at urban (municipal) tap water systems which have been in crisis mode for years.

That’s right. While entire cities like Peoria IL and Decatur IL are drowning in PFAS, lead, and manganese from broken municipal pipes, this Bill is going after the Lutherans with a hose and the 4H barn with a spigot.

So your tap water is still gonna be complete poison in Peoria.  And now your church can be fined for offering a glass of lemonade with well water.

This isn’t justice. It’s fascist water control and a public, performative health fraud perpetrated in a blazer by the Pritzker Administration.

Because Meanwhile in Real-World Downstate Illinois...

• Peoria’s tap water has 48 contaminants, including radioactive elements.
• Peoria's water pipes predate the moon landing and boil orders are frequent enough to make a person question it all.
• Rural towns like Galesburg and Cairo report brown water and still nobody in the Illinois government cares.

But this State’s chosen strategy under Pritzker? “Make an example out of the Baptists and the Catholics and grab their money while we’re at it.”

The Real Motive

This Bill isn’t about public health. It’s about optics. It gives Springfield cover when the Feds eventually step in and ask, “What did Illinois do to protect its citizens?”

Now they can say: “We passed legislation! We issued fines!” Never mind that:

• Community water systems, where most people actually live, are exempt from clean water standards. .
• The worst actors—urban municipal water companies and old, mold-ridden plumbing—won’t be touched or improved in Downstate IL during this decade. 

Who Gets Protected?

Not the children of Peoria. Not the tenants in Peoria’s many slumlord properties. Not the elderly in mobile homes near Collinsville with uranium in their water. They get PR blitzes from JB – not water purification.

Meanwhile, the State agencies responsible for this catastrophe get new powers to wreck rural water sources through fines. IDPH and IEMA—who've ignored whistleblower reports for years—now get to show up at Christian church pancake breakfasts and threaten fines over a cloudy test tube.

Final Thoughts on this Farce

This is not a clean water law. It is a bureaucratic face-saving maneuver that weaponizes enforcement against the harmless to distract from those truly harming Illinoisans.

If you're still drinking tap water in Downstate Illinois, congratulations. You're the guinea pig. And Pritzker's new law won't help you escape your cancer cluster from contaminated tap water anytime soon.  

But it might finally bankrupt a Protestant retreat center in Bartonville for having a slightly elevated nitrate reading.

So, while this Governor stages photo ops with faucets he never drinks from – the good people of Downstate IL are literally drowning in tap water rot.

Illinois didn’t pass a clean water law. Governor Pritzker passed a control law over Christians and Ma & Pop cafes to water-fine them out of existence. 

And the State still won't test the pipes here in Peoria – or the rest of Downstate IL. Or fix the ones they know are killing us.

So go ahead, JB. Sign your bills. Smile for the cameras. But don’t think for one second that the people drinking tainted tap water and breathing in benzene in our Downstate showers are fooled.

We know who this Bill was really aiming for – because THIS TIME you made it very obvious you have now come for the Christians in Downstate Illinois.  And that’s not just discriminatory legislation.  It’s shameful.  

— I’m William on War Memorial in Peoria IL