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Case Study:
Union County, SD vs Crawford County, Il

Comparison of Estimated Household Income: 

  Comparison of Estimated Median House Value (2005):          

Comparison of Poverty Rates (1999):

Comparison of Unemployment Rates (July 2007):    

Comparison of Toxic Polution: 

Crawford County (pop. 19,898) is a rural county located in southeast Illinois and is home to the Marathon refinery at Robinson, Illinois.  The Robinson refinery is a state of the art facility that processes 192,000 barrels per day of crude oil and employs about 600 highly paid refinery workers as well as numerous specialty contractors. 

You would think that prosperity would abound in Crawford County because of the refinery but if we look at the numbers we see a different picture.  The median household income in Crawford County is 69.8% of the state average and in Union County it is 126.9% of our state average.  The median house value in Crawford County is 42.4% of the state average and Union County is 120.6% of the state average.  The poverty and unemployment rates are also much higher in Crawford County.

If refineries bring prosperity to small rural counties, we should see evidence of this when we look at places like Crawford County.  As it is, Crawford County appears much worse off than Union County.  It makes you wonder, is a refinery the right type of business to welcome into our community?