Environmental Activist Asks County 5:
Will You Ban Fracking in Columbia County?
Posted November 21, 2014 07:50 am
COLUMBIA COUNTY, FL – Columbia County's County 5 met last night in a two hour plus commission meeting. A large part of the evening was taken up with conversations concerning water: the kind you drink – flush – play in, water conservation, springs protection, and the gorilla soon to be in everyone's room, Amendment 1: what did you really vote for?
Fracking – not new in Florida:
On October 15, 2014, the Dan A.
Hughes Company, L.P., after community and official
pressure from Collier County and elsewhere,
voluntarily abandoned its drilling
permit which would have
allowed it to frack on the doorstep of the Everglades.
Collier County also is home to part
of the
Big Cypress National Preserve,
Everglades National Park,
Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge, and the
Ten Thousand Islands National Wildlife Refuge.
As the conversations and the evening wound down, environmentalist Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, one of the founders and leaders of the movement to save the Santa Fe River came to the microphone.
Columbia County, with its sister counties of Hamilton and Suwannee, are home to some of Florida and the world's greatest springs, rivers, swamps and forests. See SuwanneeValley.org and SpringsRUs.
Ms. Malwitz-Jipson told The 5: I know you've already moved the pipeline out of the County. Maybe you would consider banning fracking.
Epilogue:
The 5 does most of its decision making in the back rooms of the County. They need to move Ms. Malwitz-Jipson's request to ban fracking in Columbia County into an open meeting and invite the public to comment on her proposal. (Ed)
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