Activists shut down fracking with fear

March 28, 2016

Fear just secured another victory.
By Lt. Colonel Dennis Freytes USA (Ret.), Florida co-chair of Vets4Energy.

Under pressure from green activists, the Florida Senate voted down a bill that would have helped expand fracking, the drilling process used to extract oil and natural gas from deep underground. Activists recycled discredited arguments to scare citizens and legislators alike into believing that fracking will harm Florida’s environment.

If alarmism were a crime, these radicals would be wearing handcuffs. Fracking won’t damage the environment, but it will boost the state’s economy, create more jobs, and help secure American energy independence.

Here are the facts: Fracking is already legal in Florida — the now-dead legislation would have formally authorized and allowed the state to regulate it. Such regulations would have ensured the state could carefully monitor every aspect of the process — including water safety and waste management.

Though recent technological advancements have made fracking more productive and widespread, the basic technique was first authorized nearly 70 years ago. Fracking involves drilling wells deep underground — far below water aquifers — and then pumping in a mixture of water and sand at high pressure to flush out and capture gas and oil trapped in tight rock formations.

Green activists ignore fracking’s impeccable safety record when they claim the technique would contaminate water supplies. One representative from the South Florida Wildlands Association warns, “You’re putting chemical explosives underground and setting them off… There’s always strong potential for contamination of both underground water supplies and surface water supplies.”

That line of reasoning might seem logical. But the Environmental Protection Agency itself has repeatedly disproven such allegations.

Read the entire article at Context Florida and The Suncoast News.