Tallahassee, FL – While Governor Jerry Brown continues to support an expansion of fracking and offshore drilling in California, the Florida Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation committee today voted 10-0 to pass SB 462 to prohibit “advanced well stimulation,” commonly known as fracking, throughout the state.
This strong showing of support for a state-level fracking ban by the committee, chaired by Senator Bradley, is “both unprecedented and significant” in the long standing fight to ban the dangerous oil and gas extraction practice in the Sunshine State, said Michelle Allen, Florida organizer for Food & Water Watch, in a statement
Shepherded in by Senator Dana Young and Representative Kathleen Peters, ban bills were introduced in the state Senate and House with bipartisan support.
“Floridians are ready for groundbreaking environmental legislation, and we are thrilled to have such strong leadership in the Florida Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation committee to move our state towards a safer future,” Allen stated.
“It’s finally time for our elected officials to recognize the overwhelming opposition to fracking in Florida by passing a ban bill. Competing bills have been introduced to regulate the practice, ban it, or allow it, but this is the year Florida finally passes a ban and ends the longstanding controversy once and for all,” she said.
“For the second year in a row, the Senate has shown their commitment to banning fracking because of the real risks it poses to Florida’s water. Just recently, a Duke study on fracking in Pennsylvania found high levels of radium in river and stream sediment located downstream from the discharge areas of oil wastewater treatment facilities. We cannot and should not allow the fracking industry to take our water and then contaminate our waterways. Our hope is that Speaker Richard Corcoran stops listening to special interests and lobbyists and finally acts to ban fracking in the state also,” Allen concluded.
The fracking ban bill will now move to the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Environment and Natural Resources, according to Allen.
Unfortunately, bills to impose a moratorium or ban on fracking on the other side of the country in California have been defeated in the Legislature, due to the enormous power of Big Oil in the golden state. Big Oil led the spending on lobbying in California in 2017, capturing three out the four lobbying expenditure spots, according to documents from the Secretary of State’s Office.
Chevron, based in Dublin, California, placed first with $8.2 million. The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), the trade association for the oil industry in the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Arizona, finished second with $6.2 million. Tesoro Refining and Marketing Company placed fourth with $3.2 million.
That’s a total of $17.6 million dumped into lobbying by the three top oil industry lobbying organizations alone. That figure exceeds the $14,577,314 expended by all 16 oil lobby organizations in 2016.
You can find the information on spending by employers of lobbyists here: cal-access.sos.ca.gov/…
The oil industry dumped their millions into lobbying for Jerry Brown’s “cap-and-trade” (pollution trading) bill, AB 398, “so full of loopholes that it remains cheaper for companies to pay chump change to pollute than invest real money into reducing carbon emissions,” according to Liza Tucker, Consumer Advocate for Consumer Watchdog.
During the same period, Chevron, WSPA, Tesoro and other oil industry interests were able to defeat Senate Bill 188, a bill authored by Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) to prohibit new pipelines or other infrastructure needed to support new federal oil and gas development.
Meanwhile, Jerry Brown’s regulators have expanded offshore oil drilling in state waters by 17 percent, approving 238 new oil wells since 2012.
For more information, go to: http://www.elkgrovenews.net/2018/02/big-oils-top-3-spenders-lavish-176.html