Category Archives: ban fracking in florida

Jan 1 2015: FEET TO THE FIRE:Bans to Ban Fracking bans

#okquake

#banstobanfrackingbans

#feettothefire

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hold-someone-s-feet-to-the-fire

th

verb phrase

To subject someone to strong and painful persuasion; use maximum pressure :

I’m sitting here drinking my coffee on this very peaceful New Year’s Day in Jensen Beach. I woke up to an orange striped sky and Florida Fog. A new beginning. yay

I was going to write a blog post on what was trending since I went to bed last night and what caught my eye was #okquake.

Oklahoma’s first earthquake of the year.

Continue reading →

Attention Martin County: Fracking Info please contact commissioners.

Attention Martin County: Fracking Info please contact commissioners.

From Floridians Against Fracking

Need your help here in Martin County, where FPL is headquartered and fracked gas is a commodity to be bought and sold from all over the United Sates and proposed to be shipped via Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline to here.

We need citizen support to ask BOCC to support a ban on fracking in FL.

also, please share with folks in the Indian River Lagoon area:

Here’s a one liner: for phone or email use:

On Tuesday, September 1st, the Commission will be voting to adopt a Resolution in support of a statewide ban on hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking.  I am calling to encourage you to support adopting this Resolution.

The following is a link to contact all of the Martin County Commissioners by email:

http://www.martin.fl.us/portal/page?_pageid=339,1&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&sc=344&rgg =

Here are the phone numbers for the Commissioners:

Chair – Ed Fielding 772-288-5421
Vice Chair – Ann Scott (772) 221-2357
John Haddox (772) 221-1357
Sarah Heard (772) 221-2358
Doug Smith (772) 221-2359

Confirmation that the vote for the Resolution in Martin County is on this coming Tuesday, Sept. 1st.  Most likely it will take place in the afternoon.  If you know anyone who would like to attend, the address is 2401 SE Monterey Road, Stuart, FL  34996 (Next to the Blake Library.  The item is not specifically shown on the main agenda, but it is shown under Individual Agenda Items in Section 8A3, page 82.  Please see the following link for the text.  You have to scroll down to page 82.

http://ap3server.martin.fl.us:7778/documents2010/Agenda_Items/adm/2015/8A3-2015-09-01%20Consider%20Adoption%20of%20the%202015-2016%20Federal%20and%20State%20Legislative%20Program.pdf

Please ask all our friends to come out and join us or at least send the Commissioners an email encouraging them to support the resolution.  The following is a link which allows you to contact all of the Commissioners by email:

http://www.martin.fl.us/portal/page?_pageid=339,1&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL&sc=344&rgg =

Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who you feel will be interested.

Sinkholes: Its the Geology stupid!

#Florida

Sinkholes: Its the Geology stupid!

So after I wrote my blog I was wondering if we get sinkholes here in Martin County. Will my house get get sucked up in a hole. Will I be calling 911 saying “I’m in the ground!” Yikes.

I live on a ancient sand dune by the Indian RIver Lagoon. I live on a hill. I expect my house will be water view in about 50 years if we don’t do anything about sea level rise. I picked this area besides being so close to the lagoon, it was on a hill and out of the flood zone.

So much for planning.

The sinkholes of Martin County.

mimisink will_indian_river_drive_3510696_ver1.0_640_480

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2011/03/30/192278.htm

RiskMeter’s Top 10 Sinkhole-Prone Counties in Florida are:

  1. Pasco
  2. Hernando
  3. Hillsborough
  4. Marion
  5. Pinellas
  6. Citrus
  7. Polk
  8. Orange
  9. Seminole
  10. Lake

Geology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Florida

During the early Mesozoic Era (251 – 66 mya) the supercontinent of Pangea began to rift and break apart.  As North America separated from Africa a small portion of the African plate detached and was carried away with the North American plate. This provided some of the foundation upon which Florida now rests.

(I love this. Pretty cool if you think about it.)

The Florida peninsula is a porous plateau of karst limestone sitting atop bedrock known as the Florida Platform. The emergent portion of the platform was created during the Eocene to Oligocene as the Gulf Trough filled with silts, clays, and sands. Flora and fauna began appearing during the Miocene. No land animals were present in Florida prior to the Miocene.

The largest deposits of rock phosphate in the country are found in Florida. Most of this is in Bone Valley.

Extended systems of underwater caves, sinkholes and springs are found throughout the state and supply most of the water used by residents. The limestone is topped with sandy soils deposited as ancient beaches over millions of years as global sea levels rose and fell. During the last glacial period, lower sea levels and a drier climate revealed a much wider peninsula, largely savanna.

Science

Really incredible explanation on connection between farming and sinkholes and how the aquifers are pumped out and how cavities are left over and then they collapse.

He brings us up a lot of good points.

http://dep.state.fl.us/geology/geologictopics/hazards/sinkholes.htm

“Sinkholes become more of a problem in areas where sediments that lie above the limestone are mainly clays mixed with sand. Clay causes these sediments, which also range in thickness from 30 to 200 feet, to be cohesive. They are not very permeable to water. In these areas sinkholes are most numerous. They vary in size and may form suddenly. In a few areas of Florida over 200 feet of sediments cover the underlying limestone. These sediments are cohesive because of the clay and layers of limestone they contain. Although there are not many sinkholes in these areas, the ones that occur are deep and wide. These types of sinkholes are referred to as “cover-collapse sinkholes” because cohesive layers of sediment collapse into underground cavities when they form.”

SinkholePoster

Do we really need to be messing around in the land underneath us?

Do we need to look for oil? DO we need to suck the water out of the earth?  Why are we messing with Mother Nature? Do we need to frack?

no. no. no.

We need to find betters ways to preserve  or we’ll be the ones sucked down and yelling “I’m the ground!”

Here is a lesson. I’m not sure what grade it’s for but if your 6th graders can understand this stuff perhaps our legislators can.

http://teachingboxes.org/seaLevel/lessons/lesson4_reefs/index.htm

Coral reefs only grow in shallow, clear sea water (in the photic zone).

Reefs and Sea Level

When sea level is stationary, reefs will grow laterally in a seaward direction as reef sediments accumulate. Over long periods of time reef sediments will accumulate, and the growing pile will buid up in a seaward direction. Over time, this reef material will build broad shoals and platforms just below and near the ocean’s surface. However, if sea level rises and reefs are submerged by deep water, tehy will die. The deep water isolates them form the necessary solar light and warm water conditions they require. Similarly, a drop in sea level could leve them exposed on land.

Image source: U.S. Geological Survey (http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/fact-sheet/fs025-02

There’s even an extra brain teaser on the bottom!

Extra Brain Teaser: read about Florida’s sinkholes and what they tell of about sea level in the past!

Man I love Science!

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/02/28/oil-prospectors-seek-their-next-big-strike-south-floridas-everglades-245596.html

“The letter was printed on plain white paper in plain black type, and but for its unfamiliar globe logo “Total Safety” and its unsettling message, it was no different from most of the junk mail filling the mailboxes of 30 homes in a rural south Florida area called Golden Gate Estates, east of Naples.

“Dear Sir or Madam,” it read, “Total Safety US, Inc. is currently going around your area gathering information on households for Dan A. Hughes, so we can develop a contingency plan. We need the name of the main contact of the household, the number of people in your household, address and a number where you could be contacted in case of emergency, if you have transportation to evacuate and if you have any special needs in transportation.

With a little research, one of the many perplexed recipients, a retired artist by the name of Jaime Duran, learned that Dan A. Hughes was a Beeville, Texas-based oil outfit and that the company planned on drilling a test well on the pasture alongside his log cabin, less than 1,000 feet from his front porch.

The geological traits that make Florida good for oil exploration might also make it particularly environmentally risky. Andrew Zimmerman, an associate professor in the University of Florida’s geology department, tells Newsweek that the state’s oil is found in cracked, porous limestone formations. This is also the same rock sourcing drinking water. Plus, south Florida already has its share of water problems. In addition to water managers constantly balancing over-wet or over-dry conditions, they are often being caught between the two bad choices of over-drawing from aquifers or dumping fresh water into the ocean. Lake Okeechobee, which is also a major player in the region’s water sources, is another ongoing problem, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has recently diverted polluted water into the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee Rivers from the lake to prevent its 80-year-old dike from bursting. That has dealt a near deathblow to these rivers’ estuaries, with locals complaining that the lake’s waters containing agricultural chemicals from nearby farms have killed numerous manatees, dolphins, fish and oysters.”

In a worst-case scenario, drilling could have deadly consequences.

Hydrogen sulfide is a gas that smells of eggs but rivals hydrogen cyanide in its potential to kill and is often present in fields with sour crude oil, the kind found in south Florida.

You have to watch and listen to this video! Lets not be the one’s who get sucked into the ground.

Big Sugar Summit Update: Awesome Speakers! Check it out!

Who’s going to be the party of clean water and no more discharges?

@BarackObama

@joenegronfl

@RepMurphyFL

@SteveCrisafulli

@MaryLynnMagar

@Gayle_Harrell

DSC_0006

To our legislators in Tallahassee who do you represent? Because your not representing us!

Here is a video of 7,000 citizens of the Treasure coast marching to the locks after we were decimated in 2013. I don’t see anything about party. I do however see a lot of people that want this to stop.

It’s really painful to write this stuff. We have an awesome clean water movement. Its made up of a great group of people who never ask about party. Because clean water is for all not just for some. The toxic discharges affect all the people.

Here is party breakdown for Martin County. Republicans: 51,031 Democrats 26,292

MARTIN 51,031 26,294 5,437 20,630 103,392

So this year the Republicans have a super majority and they think they are so well organized that they leave  and go out of the sunshine to talk and they bully members of their party to follow “leadership.”

In Tallahassee people are cut off at the knees if they don’t vote as leadership intended and we all suffer. We’re certainly not represented.

I feel like the Republicans in Tallahassee are not even representing their own base. Because their base needs clean water.

So who are you representing when you do this stuff?

Seem’s like Big sugar is totally represented. Because if you represented us the land would be bought and the discharges would stop.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/as-us-sugar-flexes-muscle-amendment-1-supporters-fret-about-less-money-for/2226965

One thing these guys are really good at coming up with a message and repeating it over and over again until you yourself can’t remember whats true. That’s why excellent documentation is so important.

This is an excellent article written by our own Tyler Treadway. Thank goodness for him and our incredible journalists at the Stuart News.

As a reminder Sen. Joe Negron wanted the UF Study and he found the money to do so. Sen Negron waited for this study before saying anything. After all, he insisted it get done. So it comes out and instead of reading it people glom on to what they want. Which is natural.

The problem is the people who are making decisions about our discharges and our clean drinking water are glomming on also.

This article needs to be read by people who are REPRESENTING the citizens of Martin County.

http://www.tcpalm.com/franchise/indian-river-lagoon/health/uf-water-study-cherrypicked-to-suit-arguments-for-against-us-sugar-land-buy_59243768

“Statement: Water district board member Kevin Powers at the April 9 meeting noted that none of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan’s 68 projects has been completed and said, “Nobody wants (the discharges to stop) more than me, but we’re not going to get there if we don’t complete some of these projects.”

Fact: The UF study does call for accelerating “the funding and completion of existing and federally authorized CERP projects designed specifically to provide relief” to the estuaries. It also states those projects won’t stop the discharges. That’s going to require “enormous increases in storage and treatment of water both north and south of the lake.”

Statement: A March 28 Miami Herald editorial stated the study determined the sugar land is “among the must-have pieces of land that a winning environmental strategy requires.”

Fact: The study states reducing discharges and meeting the Everglades’ need for more water will “require between 11,000 and 129,000 acres of additional land” between the lake and the national park, but it doesn’t identify what land. “The U.S. Sugar option land may or may not be the right land, but additional land will be needed to achieve restoration,” Graham said.”

You all still have time to listen and learn and turn this around for the people you represent.

#buytheland #sendcleanwatersouth

Call to Action: Ban Fracking in Florida: CRITICAL

Guest blogger today

This is from my friend Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson.

Call to Action: Ban Fracking in Florida: CRITICAL, please share…
Tuesday, March 31, 2015 1:30 pm in Tallahassee.
Please make phone calls or attend Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee.
Frack bill, SB 1582 will allow well operators to hide the chemicals they use from the public.

Frack bill, SB 1468 will allow industry to get permitted water for each and every “high pressure well stimulation” at a time when, all over the state, we are grappling with our water supply.

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/1468/BillText/Filed/PDF
http://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/1582/BillText/Filed/PDF

Please call the Committee members below to urge them to vote NO on the bills. At this moment, phone calls are better than a mass email. Please take a few minutes to reach out to them.
SB 1582 – Pub. Rec./High-pressure Well Stimulation Chemical Disclosure Registry by Senator Richter.
Talking points:

If this bill becomes law, Floridians will not be able to find out about the worst chemicals frackers inject through their aquifer because they’ll be kept secret.
 There is no federal protection available under the Clean Water Act (which deals with surface waters) or the Safe Drinking Water Act which was amended to exclude fracking from its definition of “underground injection” in the 2005 Energy Policy Act thanks to VP Cheney’s Energy Task Force (§ 300h(d)(1)(B)(ii))
SB 1582 disguises its true intention by claiming to be about preventing one business from stealing “proprietary business information” (trade secrets) from another. In reality it is designed to gut the disclosure provisions of the bill it is linked to, SB 1468 titled Regulation of Oil and Gas Resources, also by Senator Richter.

The bill does an end run around the public interest by misappropriating the rationale for trade secrets for its true purpose of avoiding public scrutiny. 
SB 1582 is similar to the relevant parts of an ALEC model bill that can be seen here: http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/the-disclosure-of-hydraulic-fracturing-fluid-composition-act/

The ALEC bill includes the disclosure and trade secrets language in one bill, but the Florida version requires two bills because of Florida’s Constitutional requirement that public records exemptions be in a stand-alone bill.
 Here’s why the oil and gas industry wants “proprietary business information” (trade secrets) confidential. Well operators can mark the most toxic chemicals as proprietary and DEP is bound to keep them secret. If someone requests the information DEP has to tell the well operator of the request and they get ten days to go to court to get an order barring disclosure of the information. The judge has to follow what is in statute in making a determination whether it truly is “proprietary business information” or not. The outcome is a foregone conclusion because the bill defines it in statute and the judge will always have to issue an order banning disclosure.

From the text of SB 1582:
71 Section 2.

The Legislature finds that it is a public

72 necessity that proprietary business information, as defined in

73 s. 377.24075(1)(a)-(e), Florida Statutes, and relating to high

74 pressure well stimulations, submitted to the Department of

75 Environmental Protection as part of a permit application or held

76 by the department in connection with the online high pressure

77 well stimulation chemical disclosure registry, be made

78 confidential and exempt from s. 119.07(1), Florida Statutes,and

79 s. 24(a), Article I of the State Constitution. Proprietary

80 business information must be held confidential and exempt from

81 public records requirements because the disclosure of such

82 information would create an unfair competitive advantage for

83 persons receiving such information and would adversely impact

84 the service company, chemical supplier, or well owner or

85 operator that provides chemical ingredients for a well on which

86 high pressure well stimulation are performed. If such

87 confidential and exempt information regarding proprietary

88 business information were released pursuant to a public records

89 request, others would be allowed to take the benefit of the

90 proprietary business information without compensation or

91 reimbursement to the service company, chemical supplier, or well

92 owner or operator.

As long as a well operator follows those simple instructions, no member of the public will ever find out what is being injected into their drinking water supply.  And if they don’t know about it they can’t try to do anything about it.
…and about water supply, from the text of SB 1468:
10 amending s. 377.24, F.S.;

11 requiring that a permit be obtained before the

12 performance of any high pressure well stimulation;

13 specifying that a permit may authorize single or
14 multiple activities; amending s. 377.241, F.S.;
1

5 requiring the Division of Resource Management to give

16 consideration to and be guided by certain additional

17 criteria when issuing permits; amending s. 377.242,

18 F.S.; authorizing the department to issue permits for

19 the performance of high pressure well stimulation;

20 clarifying provisions relating to division inspection;

21 amending s. 377.2425, F.S.; requiring an applicant or

22 operator to provide surety that performance of a high

23 pressure well stimulation will be conducted in a safe

24 and environmentally compatible manner 
In Florida, because of the nature of our Floridan aquifer and karstic soils, high pressure stimulation must not be allowed.

Our over-permitted water supply in Florida is a constant threat to our rivers, springs, lakes, agriculture, and drinking water supply. Permitting high pressure stimulation using much more than 100,000 gallons per frack, historically in other states the industry use between 1 million and 8 million gallons each frack job, will certainly strain our water supply even more, while each event contributes considerably to polluting our aquifer.
 The Water Management Districts have not even been brought into these discussions about fracking in our state. As a result of the excessive water demands, water managers must be a part of this permitting.

Please call these members’ offices today. Be polite, but make sure they know this is just plain wrong.
Thank you for Acting!
 Below are Senators’ phone numbers and suggested language:
 Senator ____
Please vote NO on these bad bills: Senate Bill 1468 and 1582 (and companion bills, HB 1205 and HB 1209). These bills would would allow hydraulic fracturing or fracking to be permitted in Florida with meaningless regulations therefor allowing industry to explore our lands even more, permit excessive water demands, contribute to pollution in our great watery state and strip local rule for counties (as seen in HB 1205, line 30).
 There is no safe fracking, we are calling for an outright ban on fracking Florida.
 I am opposed to the practice of fracking and I do not want it to be allowed in my state. I treasure my water, environment, my health and wildlife: fracking destroys all that and our way of life in this beautiful state. Please support SB 166 (and HB 169) to ban fracking. Please put SB 166 on your committee’s agenda.
Thank you and I hope you will protect and defend the people of Florida.
 Senator Phone Numbers

Charles Dean, Chair (R) 
850-487-5005

Wilton Simpson, 
Vice Chair (R) 
850-487-5018

Thad Altman (R)
850-487-5016

Greg Evers (R)
850-487-5002

Alan Hays (R)
850-487-5011

David Simmons (R)
850-487-5010

Christopher Smith (D)
850-487-5031

Darren Soto (D), (Senate sponsor of SB 166, must be heard in committee!!)
850-487-5014

Food and Water Watch has provided the call in numbers for calls into Senators Dean and Gardiner to ask that they move SB 166 to be agendaed :

Senate President Andy Gardiner 855-969-5216

Senator Charles Dean Chair 877-247-1820

p.s.
please work toward getting our counties and cities to enact Resolutions to support a statewide ban on hydraulic/acid fracturing and high pressure well stimulation.
These bills, SB 1468 and SB 1582, must be “killed”!

Sincerely,

Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson
 President, Our Santa Fe River