Getting excited! Only two days to go. Feel free to share with media contacts and everyone else. MEDIA ADVISORY FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Karen Dwyer, Ph.D. 508-847-6992 dwyerka@gmail Stone Crab Alliance @ Facebook FEDERAL EPA HEARING COULD DECIDE FATE OF FLORIDA WATER AND OPEN FLOODGATE TO EVERGLADES DRILLING AND FRACKING If it’s legal, it shouldn’t be. Residents joined by statewide allies urge federal EPA to protect Florida water and Everglades by denying Class II wastewater injection well permit, Collier #22-5 SWDW. NAPLES, FL—Tuesday, March 11, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is flying in for a Public Hearing from 4:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Golden Gate Community Center Auditorium that could decide the fate of Florida water and open the door to Everglades oil drilling. “It’s very important to join us and bring as many people as you can to show just how strong opposition is to Everglades oil drilling and how serious we are about keeping Florida’s water clean,” says Karen Dwyer, with the Stone Crab Alliance. The group has been working with residents since May to stop Dan A. Hughes, a Texas oil company, from drilling on a small part of the 115,000-acre parcel they leased for oil exploration in the Big Cypress Swamp watershed, a critical recharge area in the Everglades, only 1000 feet from homes. The proposed drill site includes four wells: two water wells already permitted by South Florida Water Management to use 5 million gallons of water per month; an exploratory oil well, still pending two administrative hearings with the state Department of Environmental Regulation (DEP); and a wastewater injection well pending the federal EPA Hearing. The topic has remained heated because of the possibility of acid and hydraulic fracking, fresh water contamination, health and safety risks, habitat fragmentation, environmental degradation, and hazards to the Everglades Restoration Project. The Stone Crab Alliance and members of the Sierra Club, Conservancy, Green Peace, Food and Water Watch, Environment Florida, Floridians for Clean Water, Indian Riverkeepers, Gulf Restoration Network, Re-Think Energy Florida, and others will call on the EPA to live up to its mission statement and “protect human health and the environment” by rejecting the wastewater injection permit. Although injection wells are the cheapest way to handle billions of gallons of industrial waste, the dangers are well known: in accidents dating back to the 1960s, toxic materials have surfaced or escaped, contaminating aquifers that supply drinking water. Concerned citizens will raise questions about fresh water contamination, fire threat, oil and toxic brine spills, risks to wetlands, limestone geology, and mechanical integrity test failures. Some will discuss seismic activity because the USGS has shown that injection wells cause earthquakes. Others, landmark exemptions because thanks to legislation, material from oil and gas is defined as nonhazardous, no matter what it contains or how dangerous it is to drinking water. Residents find it beyond belief that the law allows the oil and gas industry to inject wastewater that has carcinogenic chemicals, heavy metals, and radioactive materials. But as Tom Tomastik, a geologist with Ohio’s Department of Natural Resources and a national expert on injection well regulation explains, “the law allows it. . . . It doesn’t matter what is in it. As long as it comes from the oil and gas field it can be injected.” The question for the EPA is, will they permit the injection of toxic chemicals into the Everglades, near city water supplies? Still others, will suggest that the hydrological connection of the drill site to the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge to the east, Picayune Strand State Forest to the south, nearby residential wells to the west, and aquifers that supply underground sources of drinking water (USDWs) would make even a minor brine spill or routine seepage, catastrophic to important public lands, private wells and city water supplies and should be more than adequate basis for the EPA to deny the injection permit. Citizens find it alarming that the EPA lacks the authority to regulate what oil and gas injects into Class II disposal wells and beyond belief that the DEP lacks the authority to regulate extreme extraction and the chemicals used. Once the drilling permit is issued, industry is free to extract oil any way they’d like. They can acid or hydraulically frack any time and they don’t have to tell the community. They don’t even have to submit a new permit because extreme extraction is perfectly legal and entirely unregulated in Florida. The oil industry can also use secret chemicals in unknown concentrations—the exact formulas hidden by trade secret laws that violate the public’s right to know. And one well can use 11,000 gallons of chemicals—everything from benzene, a known carcinogen, to hydrofluoric acid, a corrosive that eats bone, steel, and rock. And flowback can be radioactive and contain strontium, a heavy metal that no amount of regulation or disclosure can ever make safe. And finally, each well is permitted to destroy 5 million gallons of water per month and unlike agricultural water, the “produced water” can never be reused; it is permanently polluted and must be injected into the boulder zone, that is not securely holding the wastebrine, as once thought, in Florida’s highly porous limestone geology. As these loopholes make evident, the laws were written by and crafted for the oil and gas industry, whose intent is NOT to make extraction safe, but to make it as inexpensive, expeditious, and profitable as possible. A decision in favor of Dan A. Hughes would open a floodgate of more drilling on Hughes’ 115,000 lease area that includes large portions of the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, Picayune Strand State Forest, Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park, Big Cypress National Preserve, Corkscrew Regional Ecosystem Watershed (CREW) and Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, with some of the last old-growth cypress in Florida. Add to this another 350,000 acres Collier Resources just leased for seismic testing in the Big Cypress. This is not vacant land, but public land in the heart of the 30-year, 13-billion Everglades Restoration Project that protects native wildlife and vital watersheds. The Everglades is a national treasure on par with the Grand Canyon. Florida’s water and Everglades are far more valuable than oil. They’re Florida’s lifeblood, fueling everything from agriculture to its multi-billion dollar tourist industry. Extreme extraction is not safe. Not here. Not anywhere. Ask Pennsylvania, Texas, and West Virginia—the frontlines for fracking and injection wells. Florida is still suffering from the worst oil disaster on record. Floridians know, accidents happen. Over time, pipes leak. Injected fluids, surface. And, as the BP disaster shows, even cement casings fail. Because it only takes one incident to taint or even ruin a community’s aquifer, drilling and injection wells are not in the public interest. WHAT: Citizens Oppose Injection Well at U.S. EPA Public Hearing WHO: Concerned Citizens Statewide WHERE: Golden Gate Community Center Auditorium, 4701 Golden Gate Parkway, Naples, FL 34116 WHEN: Tuesday, March 11, Information Meeting 4:00-6:00 p.m. and Public Hearing 6:30-8:30 p.m. ***VISUALS: Posters/Armbands/Banners and Signs/Speakers***
Posted on: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 04:32:14 +0000
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