TCPA January Meeting : Solar Energy
Monday, January 25, 2016 6:30 PM
Treasure Coast Progressive Alliance January 2016 Meeting
Fort Pierce Garden Club
911 Parkway Drive
Fort Pierce FL 34954.
Come & join the activism moving forward in 2016. Fracking in Florida, Amendment 1 Issues, upcoming solar amendment and voter registration are some of the current issues being addressed by TCPA
Florida legislators file bills that would prevent communities from regulating fracking
Posted By Erin Sullivan on Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 7:45 AM
“On Sept. 17, the League of Women Voters of Florida held a town hall on fracking. The event, which featured speakers from both pro- and anti-fracking factions, was well-attended by people concerned about the idea that utility companies are eyeing our state as fracking’s new frontier.
What better time, then, for two state legislators to quietly file pro-fracking bills, while so many activists were occupied?
On Sept. 17, Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, introduced SB 318 (aka, “Regulation of Oil and Gas Resources”). The bill summary is completely blunt about what it’s proposing: “Preempting the regulation of all matters relating to the exploration, development, production, processing, storage, and transportation of oil and gas.” Not only that, if a municipality has already decided that it does not wish to allow fracking within its jurisdiction, this bill would declare “existing ordinances and regulations relating thereto void.” The bill would provide an exception for certain zoning ordinances (it doesn’t say which zoning ordinances, but we like to think that it would at least respect your right to not have fracking companies set up shop in your residentially zoned backyard) but only if those ordinances were in place before Jan. 1, 2015. Interestingly, the bill doesn’t contain the word fracking anywhere in its text – nor does it contain the words “hydraulic fracturing.” Instead, it refers to fracking as the very innocuous-sounding practice of “high-pressure well stimulation.”
Meanwhile, over in the House, Rep. Ray Wesley Rodriques, R-Fort Myers, filed a bill the same day that would do essentially the same thing as SB 318. Rodrigues’ bill, HB 191, declares that it’s the state’s job to regulate all things relating to the oil and gas industry, “to the exclusion of all existing and future ordinances or regulations relating thereto adopted by any county, municipality, or other political subdivision of the state. Any such existing ordinance or regulation is void. A county or municipality may, however, enforce an existing zoning ordinance adopted before January 1, 2015, if the ordinance is otherwise valid.”
Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, is one of the legislators leading the charge against fracking – he’s put forward a bill for the 2016 session that would ban fracking in the state completely: “We have a very unique geology here,” he says, pointing out that the fragile limestone bed beneath our soil would not be able to withstand the practice of shooting chemicals into it at high pressure. “Our geology does not allow for fracking to be done safely.”
Soto predicts that these pro-fracking bills will likely “sail through the House,” but that there will be a battle in the Senate. Soto says that if people do care about how fracking could impact the state, or about the state’s attempt to pre-empt home rule, they should contact their legislators. “We need all the help we can get from Floridians across the state,” he says. “We’d love support for the ban. Other states have done it. New York did it last year, so it’s not like it can’t happen here.”
If these bills pass, he says, “there would be no sanctuary against this in any county in the state. … it’s concerning, to say the least.”
Something similar happened recently in Texas. The small city of Denton, Texas banned fracking within its borders in late 2014. Less than six months later, the state of Texas signed a bill into law that banned any bans on fracking, nullifying Denton’s law. A story in the Dallas Morning News pointed out that “numerous studies” have tied fracking to earthquakes, and here has been a marked increase in seismic activity in the Dallas area recently. On Sept. 21, an earthquake that measured 2.6 M on the Richter scale shook the city. The San Antonio Current says it was the “more powerful than any of the other multiple earthquakes that hit the area this year.”
Although the U.S. Geological Survey has said that the cause of recent quakes in Dallas is not clear, a study released in May by Southern Methodist University concluded that stresses caused by “oil and gas activity” in the area are likely contributors.
“That was the message from a press conference held Monday afternoon in St. Petersburg, as state Representatives Dwight Dudley (D-St. Petersburg), Jose Javier Rodriguez (D-Miami), and Amanda Murphy (D-New Port Richey) spoke out against a decision last week by the Florida Public Service Commission that would allow Florida Power & Light to collect up to $500 million per year from customers to further invest ratepayer money in natural-gas production. FP&L has roughly 4.6 million customers, but none in the Tampa Bay area (where Duke Energy and TECO are the main providers).
“Consumers are getting screwed again,” Dudley said in a phone call with Florida Politics late Monday afternoon. “A five-member panel of unelected people decide they’re going to allow this huge corporation get $500 million a year from ratepayers to subsidize and pay for fracking – drilling exploration and production of natural gas and oil,” he said with obvious disdain, adding, “It’s a staggering ripoff.”
More unelected people stealing thing from us.
Fracking is not happening right now in Florida. In late April, a proposal by Naples Republican state Senator Garrett Richter that would put “responsible regulations” in place for fracking failed to advance.
What’s it to him?
Our savings BTW will be 2 bucks a year. We can buy what two cucumbers with that. I can’t even buy the ingredients for my smoothie with that (cucumber, cantaloupe, almond milk, local honey and ice cubes). FPL wants 500 million dollars from you and can’t even buy you a smoothie.
Drilling has come under increased scrutiny in the past year, partly because the Collier-Hogan well, south of Lake Trafford, was fracked at the end of 2013.
Richter’s bill (SB 1468) defines the process as a “well intervention performed by injecting more than 100,000 gallons of fluids into a rock formation at high pressure” to create fractures to increase production at an oil or gas well.
He said the bill was crafted by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, with input from other stakeholders including Collier County and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.
Dee Ann Miller, a spokeswoman for the DEP, said the agency collaborated with Richter on the language of the bill but could not confirm if it would suggest changes or push for its passage.”
You can go on the link and read the rest. He said. She said.
But here is deal. We want no fracking. Just one more thing we do not need here.
My county Martin County said a big fat no to fracking.
My friend and tireless advocate for the water Merilee Malwitz-Jipson came to town. ( Where was I?)
The vote was unanimous and unequivocal, with Palm City, and Indiantown Commisioner John Haddox leading the way with the motion to sign a state-wide ban on fracking.
The worst oil price rout since 1986 is beginning to claim victims in the shale oil patch, and now its every man for himself.
Investors in $158.2 million of Goodrich Petroleum Corp.’s debt agreed to take 47 cents on the dollar in exchange for stock warrants for some note holders and a lien on Goodrich’s oil acreage, according to a company statement today…
“In the industry it’s called ‘getting primed,’” said Spencer Cutter, a credit analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence. “It’s every man for himself. They’re trying to get in and get exchanged, and if you can’t you’re getting left out in the cold.”
Investors in shale oil frackers like Goodrich aren’t the only ones writing off huge losses.
Earlier this month, Halcon paid about 65 cents on the dollar to investors in $1.57 billion of the company’s debt, in exchange for being third in line to get paid if the company fails… “The bubble is bursting,” Cutter said. “And if oil stays where it is, the worst is yet to come.”
With creditors of fracking companies taking huge losses on their investments, and with more losses coming, it isn’t surprising that frackers have been basically locked out of the bond market, and regulators are worried that banks are overexposed.
On one side are the bankers who have been grappling with the plunge in oil prices and the need to shore up billions of dollars in credit extended to the energy industry. On the other are regulators eager to prevent another financial crisis while not knowing what it might be. Caught in the middle are the small- and medium-size exploration and production companies that rely on credit lines that use their energy reserves as collateral.”
So it very interesting that a person who was prescient of bank is all for fracking.
So again as happened last year there are people in our legislature that say they are for local control. They tell that to you when they are running. “I’m for you!”
Here is a trailer for program that at UCF. It’s called Booktalk. My son was really involved with the project. It was a program that made trailers from books and then showed them to kids so they would get interested in reading. The two people in opening are my son Adam and Dr Kenny.
“The City of Ember is a post-apocalypticscience fiction novel by Jeanne DuPrau that was published in 2003. Similar to Suzanne Martel‘s The City Under Ground published in 1963 and Helen Mary Hoover‘s This Time of Darkness published in 1980, the story is about Ember, an underground city threatened by aging infrastructure. The young protagonist, Lina Mayfleet, and her friend, Doon Harrow (the second protagonist), follow clues left behind by the original builders of the City of Ember, to safety in the outside world.”
Every time I thing about electricity I think about this trailer. I think about the darkness and I think about the light. Then I think about the sunshine that is completely devoid in the State of Florida.
At about 1:07 “I’m your man!” That’s what I hear when people who do not have our best interests at heart do bad things. Then he says “it’s alright!”
Will they save ember or will the city be lost in darkness forever?
Harvard Law School’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics is out with a fascinating new report measuring legal and illegal corruption in American states, and Florida does not fare particularly well.
Illegal corruption is “moderately common” in Florida’s executive branch.
Illegal corruption is “very common” in the state’s legislative branch.
No state has a high ranking for illegal corruption in its judiciary.
When it comes to “legal” corruption, Florida falls into the “very common” category in both the executive and legislative branches.
Florida is also listed as one of America’s most corrupt states, along with Arizona, California, Kentucky, Alabama, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Rhode Island, and Texas.
The Safra Center compiled its corruption rankings in part by surveying news reporters covering state politics across the country, in addition to the investigative reporters covering issues related to corruption during the first half of 2014.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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 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
cyndi lenz 