Fracking too hazardous for Florida

The last time “fracking” happened in Florida was December 2013, when the Texas-based Dan A. Hughes Company released 700,000 gallons of water and hydrochloric acid along the western edge of the Everglades in Collier County, near the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary. The state Department of Environmental Protection issued a cease-and-desist order due to concerns for groundwater contamination the following month.

Do the people of Florida want fracking to return?

What the people want is evident in the fact that 20 counties and 40 cities have already banned this technique for oil-and-gas drilling. In fact, 80 percent of Florida Senators have fracking bans in their districts.

Unfortunately, the Florida Senate, like the House of Representatives before it, is poised to reject the will of the people and the tradition of Home Rule for the sake of profits for Big Oil. Senate Bill 318 preempts counties and municipalities from banning any fracking activity, including exploration, development, production, processing, storage, and transportation.

Floridians will get the gas flares, carcinogens, and long-term environmental consequences. Tallahassee lawmakers and a few oil tycoons will split the spoils.

Perched at sea level, with our aquifer spreading out 1,000 feet below porous limestone, sand, and rock, Florida’s unique ecosystem is hardly a good candidate for hydraulic fracking. The process employs millions of gallons of highly pressurized water, sand, and chemicals to fracture tight underground rock formations. That creates holes through which oil or natural gas can be pumped.

Fracking proponents are now pushing acidization, which relies on various concoctions of 10 to 12 “trade secret” chemical additives plus hydrochloric or formic acid to “etch” channels in the rock for natural gas to escape.

Concerned about the effects on Florida’s drinking water? The fracking industry doesn’t share your concern –it has been exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2005.

Quite likely the most toxic aspect of fracking is the millions of gallons of wastewater it produces. Elsewhwere, wastewater has been found to be laced with chemicals such as arsenic, chloride, the known carcinogen benzene as well as naturally occurring radioactive materials such as radon and radium that are loosened during the fracking process. The wastewater is hazardous to transport and store. Sometimes, drillers reuse it in other wells, but that which is not suitable for reuse is stored in cement-sealed injection wells.

The EPA estimates that there are 144,000 injection wells in the United States today, receiving 2 billion gallons of fracking fluid per day. The injection wells are believed to be causing the manmade earthquakes experienced in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas and Ohio.

Florida should be happy to account for only .03 percent of injection wells nationwide (56 wells in 2011, according to the EPA). But passage of SB 318 will put us in line for long-term storage of toxins that would be deadly to our aquifer and that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, miscarriages and increased seismic activity.

You might have guessed that a positive cost-benefit analysis has motivated our state legislators’ foray in to fracking. But you’ll be disappointed to know that their own staff research indicates “a significant negative fiscal impact on the state.”

At the same time, U.S. Energy Information Administration data puts Florida’s proven reserves of natural gas at less that 0.1 percent of the national total.

It just doesn’t make sense to expose Florida’s tourism industry, agriculture industry, and citizenry to this.

As a fifth-generation Floridian, it comes as no surprise to me that people from elsewhere have the wrong-headed idea that you can apply practices that work somewhere up north and expect the same outcomes here. I understand not everyone grew up seeking summertime respite in the cool springs that bubble up a constant 72 degrees, even when its 99 degrees in the shade, or seeing TV news reports of sinkholes swallowing homes, or learning about the precious Florida aquifer starting in grade school.

But when I see the Florida legislature showing less regard for my home than a tourist, I cannot abide.

Last week, representatives including Brevard’s Steve Crisafulli, R-Merritt Island, John Tobia, R-Melbourne Beach, and Ritch Workman, R-Melbourne, voted in support of fracking. Now it is left to Sen. Thad Altman, R-Viera, and the rest of the Florida Senate to honor the people of Florida’s will, and put a stop to SB 318.

Devon Vann, a Satellite Beach resident, is a member of FLORIDA TODAY’s editorial advisory board.

House Bill 191

•Places a moratorium on unregulated fracking in Florida until the state completes a study of the effects in 2017.

•Creates regulations for fracking if Legislature approves the practice following the study.

•Prohibits cities and counties from banning fracking in their jurisdictions. However, they may adopt zoning or land-use requirements regarding where oil-and-gas exploration can occur.