Sen. Bill Montford seeks to ban fracking and have it declared a threat to Florida's aquifer

Sen. Bill Montford seeks to ban fracking by having the controversial practice declared a threat to the state's drinking water supply.

The legislative proposal filed this week has buoyed environmentalists and academics anxious to see fracking outlawed to protect the aquifer.

Unlike other bills to ban fracking – a procedure that injects water and chemicals into the ground to exploit oil and gas formations – Montford's SB-314 pushes to include language that would raise the bar for proponents of fracking. 

In a legislative finding, Montford would have the Legislature declare as a matter of fact fracking is a threat to Florida’s water supply and therefore must be prohibited.

A handful of bills has been introduced for the March legislative session to ban the procedure. Montford’s is the only one that moves the assertion that fracking poses a danger from opinion to fact.

A legislative finding is significant in terms of a potential legal challenge to a prohibition. Any attempt to lift the ban would first require a challenge to lawmakers’ research and conclusion before the case would address the law itself.

“Is it a little bit of political-legal boilerplate? I’m sure it is, but they are saying they have examined the issue and this is no longer an opinion, legally but this is a fact,” said Aubrey Jewett a University of Central Florida political scientist. “They would be going on record that the aquifer is critically important and to protect the aquifer we must ban fracking.”

Two other bills filed for the upcoming session say drilling permits for oil and gas do not authorize “advanced well stimulation treatments,” jargon for fracking. Montford’s proposal concludes that the process of deploying a high volume of a mixture of water, sand, gels, and chemicals into the ground to fracture rocks and release oil and gas deposits is a critical threat to a clean water supply for "Florida's natural systems".

“He’s smart. I like that,” said Sean McGlynn, an environmental scientist active in efforts to protect Wakulla Springs. “People will understand this much better than a scientific explanation. We get wrapped in the geology, but he states the problem: The result of fracking is a threat to the aquifer.”

There are two active oil and gas fields in Northwest Florida and five active oil and gas fields in South Florida. Currently, there are no fracked wells in the state because the known oil and gas formations do not require fracking to get to the oil and gas.

But environmentalists fear technology may discover formations where fracking could release the deposits. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 24,000 hydraulically fractured wells in the U.S. The number of such wells increased to 300,000 two years ago, according to a Senate report, and accounted for 67 percent of the country’s natural gas and 51 percent of its crude oil production.

"Florida is the last state in the union that should consider fracking," said Montford with a reference to the state's sponge-like karst foundation and high water table. "Our children and grandchildren deserve the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful natural resources I remember from my childhood."

Lawmakers and clean water advocates have failed to ban fracking during the past two sessions. They received a boost last week when Gov. Ron DeSantis in an executive order on water policy last week directed the Department of Environmental to oppose all off-shore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing.

While Senate committees approved a ban in 2018 the proposal was never heard in the Florida House. House leaders said they would prefer a moratorium and a study of in place of a full-scale ban. Montford includes a call for such a study along with a legislative finding.

Reporter James Call can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com.