- Local
- Community
- Journalism
Support the independent voice of South Florida and help keep the future of New Times free.
Update: State Senator Garrett Richter, the bill's sponsor, officially pulled SB 318 earlier today, before the measure could be voted on. At least this year, it seems Broward County will remain free of fracking wells. Lap up all the groundwater you want, folks.
A highly controversial bill that Florida's Senate Appropriations Committee shot down last week could return for a vote again today, after Sen. Lisbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, moved to "reconsider" her vote during last week's meeting.
The bill in question – SB 318 – may be the most widely debated bill of this year's state legislative season. If passed, the bill would regulate – but allow – fracking wells to be drilled on state ground, and also bar local municipalities from regulating the practice on their own. (Fracking is the highly controversial process by which water, sand, and an unknown cocktail of chemicals are injected into the ground, in order to extract oil and natural gas.)
The bill should be of particular interest to Broward residents, considering that Broward's County Commission in January banned fracking on county soil. A private landowner, Kanter Real Estate, LLC, currently owns more than 20,000 acres of undeveloped Everglades land just west of Miramar. Kanter had applied to drill an exploratory well to hunt for oil and natural gas. At a City Commission meeting on January 26, Miramar Mayor Wayne Messman spoke before the County
Though Kanter's application did not mention fracking specifically, Matthew Schwartz, director of the South Florida Wildlands Association, told New Times in January that he thinks there'd be no other reason to drill an "exploratory" well.
"Once you find oil, you frack it," he said. "That's the point of an exploratory well."
Roughly 20 other counties have also passed local fracking bans.
The State House of Representatives approved its version of the bill in January.
Luckily, on February 25, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted 10-9 to kill the senate bill, after a huge number of protesters spoke out against fracking at the meeting. But, immediately afterward, Benacquisto moved to "reconsider" her vote.
The bill will only be voted on again if lawmakers can strike some sort of compromise, and fix the issues some senators had with the bill. Calls to Garrett Richter, the senator sponsoring the legislation, were not returned.
Karen Dwyer, an environmental activist from Collier County, had traveled all the way to Broward to help convince the County Commission to ban fracking. She told New Times via email that she planned to take a road trip up to Tallahassee today to ensure the bill stays dead.
URGENT: The Senate Appropriations Committee will reconsider profracking bill SB 318 this Tuesday, March 1. Please keep...
Posted by Karen Dwyer on Friday, February 26, 2016
The bill is the final item on today's agenda.
Keep New Times Broward-Palm Beach Free... Since we started New Times Broward-Palm Beach, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of South Florida, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering South Florida with no paywalls.