Suit filed over oil plan

Groups want to stop Texas company exploring in Big Cypress National Preserve

Six environmental groups filed suit Wednesday to stop a Texas company from exploring for oil at Big Cypress National Preserve, home to black bears, Florida panthers and other wildlife.

The National Park Service in May approved a plan by Burnett Oil Co. to look for oil across 70,000 acres of the preserve, which straddles Alligator Alley west of the Broward County line.

The plan calls for sending heavy off-road vehicles through the preserve to pound the ground with 7-inch-thick steel plates, creating vibrations to reveal the presence of the geological structures that could contain oil. Any drilling would require an additional environmental review.

Although the park service concluded the work would “pose no significant environmental impacts,” environmental groups said Wednesday it could have devastating consequences for one of the most significant swaths of wilderness in the United States, a source of water for the Everglades and home to endangered species such as the panther, Florida bonneted bat, eastern indigo snake, wood stork and red-cockaded woodpecker.

“The federal government should protect Big Cypress for the American people and not allow a dirty energy company to transform it into an industrial zone,” Alison Kelly, staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.

Filing suit in U.S. District Court in Fort Myers were the Natural Resources Defense Council, Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, Conservancy of Southwest Florida, Earthworks and South Florida Wildlands Association.

Ryan Duffy, spokesman for Burnett, said the company does not comment on pending litigation. A spokeswoman for the park service did not return a phone call Wednesday.

The environmental groups said the exploration was just the first step in a process that could lead to drilling, pipelines and all the industrial activity that would come with them. In addition to criticizing the plan itself, the groups said the park service did an inadequate environmental review.

“It is unconscionable for the National Park Service to have approved 70,000 acres of seismic testing without a full Environmental Impact Statement,” said Matthew Schwartz, executive director of the South Florida Wildlands Association. “We are hoping that this legal action will lead directly to that required review — and to a new approach from the service which puts resource protection first.”

Oil drilling would be nothing new to Big Cypress, which is a national preserve, not a park, and therefore open to a wider range of human activities, including hunting. The original owners of most of the land, the descendants of southwest Florida pioneer Barron Collier, retained the mineral rights when the preserve was created in 1974.

The preserve has two active oil fields, both operating by BreitBurn Energy Partners of Los Angeles. They form part of a chain of oil fields running along what’s called the Sunniland Trend, a narrow geologic feature that contains oil, running from Fort Myers to Miami.