Last night, the Escambia Board of County Commissioner voted, 3-2, for a resolution that supported a statewide ban of fracking.
One of the citizens who spoke in favor of the resolution was Amy Datz. Here is the statement she read to the commissioners:
Every decision has a consequence. Please ask yourself this question: does the detriment of hydraulic fracturing or fracking outweigh the benefit?
There are other ways to get natural gas there are other ways to generate energy.
I understand the desire to move away from dependance on foreign oil, this can be achieved but it should not be achieved at the expense of our environment. Our water here in the pan handle is precious, our most precious resource. If we don’t have water we have nothing. We can’t raise livestock, we can’t support the wildlife and recreational water sports that tourists come here to experience and even our crops could not flourish with out an abundant supply of fresh clean water.
A primary business in Escambia County is export. When fracked oil and gas is transported it is not classified in the same category as regular oil and gas. It is classified as explosive. When trains and tanker trucks carrying fracked materials are passing by your homes, the homes of your loved ones or your constituents there is a greater potential that what might normally be considered a minor accidental event can become a major catastrophic explosion due to the explosive nature of this fracked product. Our fire departments and emergency rooms are not equipped to deal with this threat. The secret nature of this business makes it even more difficult for the Fire departments and emergency rooms to deal with such an event. Would you want to sit in an ER waiting 60-90 days to find out what you had been exposed to as a result of a fracked fluid or airborne event. That’s how long your lawyers would have to take to sue the companies to get that information.
What will happen when a hurricane hits? When these well heads are flooded or destroyed. Will that bring environmental contamination to your water?
Fracking is an eminent threat to our water supply. Not only in the water drawn for the operation but for the potential contamination caused by the millions of gallons of backflow waste water which will contain toxic chemicals, radioactive and heavy metal materials along with explosives. There is no safe way to dispose of that waste water.
Escambia Co. Residents have personal private home wells, along with City water well systems which are subject to the threat of contamination by fracking. If those wells are contaminated by this waste water the population will not be able to afford to drill new wells all over the county and even new wells could be contaminated by the fracking process. Over 300 home owners in New Mexico are suing the Oil and Gas Companies for the destruction of their wells.
Oklahoma pumps the toxic and highly explosive backflow wastewater into deep injection wells. Before fracking in Oklahoma they had 5 earthquakes/yr now they have 500 earthquakes in 6 months. The Official Oklahoma State Geologists announced recently that the increased earthquakes were directly attributable to increased fracking in their state. The Oklahoma Supreme Court has recently agreed that citizens can sue the Oil and Gas industry for damage caused by these earthquakes caused by fracking. In Florida the seismic testing and the actual underground explosions caused during the fracking process would equate to increased sink holes. You all know that prevention is by far cheaper then clean up from a pollution spill or the development of a sink hole. That clean up cost from fracking waste water disposal would fall on this county commission to deal with in your budget.
One thing almost all of us in this room are concerned with are property rights and property values. Many people don’t own or don’t know if they own the mineral rights under their property. In areas where fracking occurs the property values plummet, people can’t get mortgages or insure their homes. Please ask yourself this question, honestly: If you have the choice between buying a home in an area where fracking is occurring and one where there is no fracking which one would you choose. I know you as commissioners, protectors and defenders of your voters don’t want to put your constituents in a position where your choices cause their property values and future ability to use their land are put in jeopardy.
As for the argument that we want to make America energy independent from foreign oil. Please consider this, if every drop of oil and gas that could be pumped out of Florida was pumped, it would only satisfy the world market for 4 days but would leave Florida with over a 100 years of environmental damage and maybe damaged forever. It’s a bad deal for the citizens, tourism, for the wildlife and for our agricultural industry.
I would like to call your attention to the folders I gave each of you. We started getting county resolutions last January. On the left is the list of counties and cities that have passed resolutions, including Monticello earlier this month, and Jefferson County earlier this week. The 12 Counties, 11 cities that have passed resolutions to ban fracking represent 5.6 million Floridians. Please join them.
I have heard the argument that this action is premature but we are at a critical juncture. We defeated fracking legislation in 2014 and 2015. We are following the model of action that NY citizens like us took to ban fracking statewide. They went county by county getting resolutions until the entire state demonstrated they did not want fracking. We believe if the Florida legislators see that their voters don’t want fracking they will come around to passing a statewide ban on fracking. Thats why your vote at this time is critical and not premature.
The folder also includes several articles from the Physicians for Social Responsibility the Nobel Prize winning group that has come out against fracking. One of the articles points out in a study by the University of Penn and Columbia University that in areas where fracking occurs with 80 fracking wells in 60 square miles there were the following hospitalizations increases:
49% Cancer
54% neonatological (your grandchildren)
71% neurological and rheumatological problems
43% endocrine conditions
24% heart problems
50% urological issues
38% dermatological issuesAll this leading to increased hospitalization costs and absenteeism expenses to business
In North Dakota in areas where fracking occurred the average rate of deaths per 100,000 people climbed 148% on average from 2009 – 2013 compared to the previous 5 years before fracking. The rest of the state fell by 1% over the same period.
There are articles discussing the bogus nature of the EPA studies. After 5 years of study the EPA could not get a single fracking facility to allow them to do before and after studies on the water impacted by the fracking process.
Finally California has wasted over 70 million gallons of their fresh clean drinking water on fracking and now has to use contaminated fracked water on their crops. I personally am avoiding their crops in the market place for that reason.
Please pass this resolution. Protect your family, and your land and water legacy for your children and grandchildren. Let your legislature and Governor know you don’t want your county destroyed.