Flawed Fracking Legislation Stopped

Thanks to your help, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and our partners were successful in stopping the passage of legislation that would leave our citizens, water supplies, and the environment more vulnerable to enhanced forms of oil well stimulation — including fracking.

The Conservancy was directly involved in the legal actions with unauthorized fracking at the Hogan well and worked in good faith with lawmakers throughout the past two years to advocate for responsible oil and gas legislation that would provide basic environmental and public health safeguards. This included immediately suspending and studying all forms of oil well stimulation involving the underground injection of harmful chemicals. Unfortunately, SB318 failed to do that. Additionally, SB318 would have removed cities’ and counties’ home rule ability to ‘say no’ to inappropriate oil drilling projects and activities, including banning oil well stimulation treatments such as fracking.

The Conservancy of Southwest Florida believes that it is essential to have truly meaningful legislation to protect our water resources from these activities. We oppose efforts that purport to protect the environment and create transparency, but in fact do not, and especially when it would do more harm than good as this bill would have done.

Please take a moment to thank the Senators who opposed this severely flawed legislation and ask them to support more meaningful legislation next session.