Florida Legislature Pushing ALEC, CSG Sham Fracking Chemical Disclosure Model Bill

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Florida may soon become the fourth state with a law on the books enforcing hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) chemicalย disclosure. The Florida House of Representatives’ Agriculture and Natural Resources Subcommittee voted unanimously (11-0) on March 7 to require chemical disclosure from the fracking industry. Forย many, that is cause for celebration andย applause.ย 

Fracking for oil and gas embedded in shale rock basins across the country and world involves the injection of a 99.5-percent cocktail of water and fine-grained sillica sand into a well that drops under the groundwater table 6,000-10,000 feet and then another 6,000-10,000 feet horizontally. The other .5 percent consists of a mixture of chemicals injected into the well, proprietary information and a โ€œtrade secretโ€ under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which current President Barack Obama voted โ€œyesโ€ onย as aย Senator.

That loophole is referred to by many as the โ€œHalliburton Loopholeโ€ because Dick Cheney had left his position as CEO of Halliburton – one of the largest oil and gas services corporations in the world – to become Vice President and convene the Energy Task Force.ย That Task Force consisted ofย the Secretaries of State, Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation and Energy. One of its key actions wasย opening the floodgates for unfettered frackingย nationwide.

Between 2001 and the bill’s passage in 2005, the Task Force held over 300 meetings with oil and gas industry lobbyists and upper-level executives.ย The result was a slew of give-aways to the industry in this omnibus piece of legislation. On top of the โ€œHalliburton Loophole,โ€ the bill also contains an exemption for fracking from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcement of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Waterย Act.ย ย ย 

The federal-level response to closing theย โ€œHalliburton Loopholeโ€ is the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals (FRAC) Act, a bill that never garnered more than a handful ofย co-sponsors.ย 

The state-level response, the story goes, is versions of the billย thatย recentlyย passed onan 11-0 bipartisan basisย in a Florida state houseย subcommittee.

Introduced asย theย โ€œFracturing Chemical Usage Disclosure Actโ€ย on Feb. 13,ย bill sponsor Rep. Ray Rodrigues (R-76)ย told The Palm Beach Postย the day the bill passed in Subcommittee that there isย โ€œevery indicationโ€ฆat some point in the futureโ€ย that fracking will proceedย in the Sunniland Shale basinย and that being โ€œproactiveโ€ is the way to go.ย A senate companion bill was also introduced asย SB 1028 by Sen. Jeff Clemons (D-27) and if the bill passes in both chambers, it will be labeledย SB 1776.

What Rodrigues didn’t mention: the law was written by what investigative journalist Steve Coll referred to as a โ€œprivate empire,โ€ย ExxonMobil.

Like its federal-level predecessor, it still contains the โ€œtrade secretsโ€ loophole. It’s also a model bill distributed both by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), as first revealed by The New York Times in April 2012,ย and the Council of State Governments (CSG), as first revealed here on DeSmogBlog.ย 

FracFocus Faรงade: Sunshine State’s Copy-Paste andย Disaster-in-the-Make

It’s โ€œSunshine Weekโ€ for open government groups and in the Sunshine State we’ve just witnessed a โ€œcopy-pasteโ€ job that happened out in broad daylight with no one noticing – untilย now.

A review of the bill’s verbiage reveals it is essentially a mirror image of ALEC‘s โ€œDisclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Actโ€ and CSG‘s โ€œAct relating to the disclosure of the composition of hydraulic fracturing fluids.โ€

Most telling is the section of Florida’s bill calling for an โ€œonline hydraulic fracturing chemical registry.โ€ That registry, like the Texas model the bill is based off of, would be run by FracFocus.ย An August investigation by Bloomberg News revealed that FracFocus merely offers the faรงade of disclosure, or a โ€œfig leafโ€ of it, as U.S. Rep. Diane DiGette (D-CO), co-sponsor of the FRAC Actย putย it.

โ€œEnergy companies failed to list more than two out of every five fracked wells in eight U.S. states from April 11, 2011, when FracFocus began operating, through the end of last year,โ€ wrote Bloomberg. โ€œThe gaps reveal shortcomings in the voluntary approach to transparency on the site, which has received funding from oil and gas trade groups and $1.5 million from the U.S. Department ofย Energy.โ€

In reality, FracFocus is a public relations front for the oil and gas industry, as we reported here in Dec. 2012, explaining,

FracFocus’ domain is registered by Brothers & Company, a public relations firm whose clients include Americaโ€™s Natural Gas Alliance, Chesapeake Energy, and American Clean Skies Foundation – a front group for Chesapeakeย Energy.

In short, the bill offers โ€œsunshineโ€ to the public in nameย only.ย 

โ€œThis disclosure bill has a hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through,โ€ Texas Rep. Lon Burnam (D-90) toldย Bloomberg.ย 

How the Bill Became aย โ€œModelโ€

In May 2011, the Obama Administration Department of Energy (DOE) fracking subcommitteeย –ย consisting almost entirely of officials with ties to the oil and gas industry –ย convened to produce โ€œbest practicesโ€ for state-level regulations and disclosure standards forย fracking.ย 

Out of the subcommittee came the standards written into a Texas bill, HB 3328,ย passed one month later in June 2011 in a 137-8 roll call vote, while its Senate companion bill passed on a 31-0 unanimous roll call vote. $1.5 million in FracFocus funding stems from the DOE fracking subcommittee.ย 

A Dec. 2012ย Bloombergย probe revealed that the industry utilized the โ€œtrade secretsโ€ exemption 19,000 times its first year as law of the land in Texas. For perspective, there are only 6,000 fracking wells in the state at-large.ย 

In Oct. 2011 and Dec. 2011, the Texas bill became a โ€œmodel billโ€ both at the CSG and ALEC annual meetings, respectively. ExxonMobil was one of the biggest corporate patrons for CSG‘s annual meeting that year, serving as a Gold Level Sponsor.ย 

CSG is a partially corporate-funded and taxpayer-subsidized (via portions of state-level budgets) โ€œtrade associationโ€ which, like ALEC, passes model legislation often written by and voted upon by corporate lobbyists sitting alongside state-level legislators at its annual meetings. It refers to these bills as โ€œSuggested State Legislationโ€ (SSL). Unlike ALEC, its maintains bipartisanย membership.

ALEC is 98 percent funded by corporations, corporate-funded foundations and trade associations. Like CSG, ALEC also passes โ€œmodel billsโ€ at its annual meetings in similar fashion: behind closed doors, with corporate lobbyists sitting alongside state-level legislators voting โ€œup-downโ€ on proposals.ย Unlike CSG, it’s predominantly a Republican-centricย operation.ย 

The New York Timesย revealed in an April 2012 investigationย thatย ExxonMobil authoredย the disclosure standards in the Texas bill that came from the DOE fracking subcommittee. ExxonMobil is the number one producer of shale oil and gas in the United States and a corporation which scored $44.9 billion in profits in 2012, $300 million dollars short of the world record for highest ever annual profit (which Exxon set in 2008).

The model bill has passed in Colorado and Pennsylvania and was proposed but failed inย Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Indiana, California, and Arkansas. Section 77 of Illinois’ proposed Hydraulic Fracturing Regulation Actย – as revealed here on DeSmogBlog –ย also contains the โ€œtrade secretโ€ย exemption.ย 

Seven of the 15ย members of the Floridaย Agriculture and Natural Resources Subcommittee are ALEC members.ย 

Industry’s Florida Plans Include Fracking theย Everglades

A portion of theย Sunniland Trend Shale, based in southwestern and southern Florida, overlaps the Everglades National Park.ย Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, a climate change denier, has gone on the record stating fracking in the pristine park is fair game.ย 

Department of Environmental Protection enforcement fell to record-low levels in 2011 in Florida, Scott’s first year inย office.

โ€œThe total number of enforcement cases fell by more than a fourth (28%) and the DEP Office of General Counsel received the third lowest number of case reports in agency history,โ€ wrote The Bradenton Times. โ€œPollution penalty assessments dipped by a similar proportion (29%) while penalties actually collected dropped by more than half (57%). The number of big fine cases (more than $100,000) also was cut byย half.โ€

While some speculate as to whether fracking will ever actually happen in Florida, the oil and gas industry has shown it’s serious about developing this shale basin and will host the โ€œEmerging Shale Plays USAโ€ conference in Houston, TXย from April 24-25.ย One of the sessions being led byย Brandt Temple, the CEO ofย Sunrise Exploration & Productionย is titled, โ€œMapping The Geological Variance Of The Lower Sunniland To Pinpoint Sweet Spots And Identify Where To Place Wells.โ€ย ย 

ALEC‘s track-record in the โ€œUnited States of ALECโ€ is nothing to sneezeย at.

โ€œEach year, close to 1,000 bills, based at least in part on ALEC Model Legislation, are introduced in the states. Of these, an average of 20 percent become law,โ€ ALEC boasts on its website.

One would be remiss given this track record, then, to write off the threat of fracking in the Floridaย swamplands.ย 

Photo Credit: ShutterStock |ย Kiplingย Brock

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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