Many say there is no way to get to it without poisoning the very thing that makes life there possible a an abundance of clean water al jazerras adam may reports. [ chanting no drilling ] air is dieing, water is dieing, the people is getting sick. Wake up before you kill the creation of gods gift. Thank you. [applause] reporter one by one they stepped up to the microphone to voice their fears and tell their stories. My brother died last year at 51. My sister died the year before at 50. I am 49 years old. And i just got out of the hospital with a lung removed. I dont want my kids to die like my family did. Get them out. Reporter so it went for more than four hours. At a recent hearing of state and federal officials in southwest florida. The reason for their anger, a plan to drill for oil next to the everglades wilderness. [ what do you went . Reporter new techniques are making it possible to drill in areas where it was once difficult. But many say the resulting waste wastewater will be toxic. I just hope people realize this is about clean water. Reporter among those in the crowd, pamela and jaime duran, they live a little more than a stones throw from one. Reporter proposed oil wells. Ground zero is down there and its a thousand feet to where it is. Reporter this is it. You will be able to see this, pretty clear has . So the well would be right about there . The well would be in line with that tree about i say about 400 the beginning o of it wil be 400 feet from here. This is part of the watershed that feeds the everglades. Reporter jaime is a retired engineer, pam had an artist. They live in a set that go can only be described as fairytale. Its a little piece of paradise. Weigh this was taye healthy way to retire. Reporter you call it a little piece of paradise. Yes. There are no noises here, you dont hear anything at night. You hear crickets and thats about as loud as it gets at night. Reporter if an oil well goes in next door it will mean noise, dust, and dozens of trucks passing the durans home each day. But one thing worries them movement. As part of the drilling, millions of gallons of wastewater mixed with women challes injected back in to the ground. They fear it will poison their water supply. There is a spill it will eventually get to this water well. Reporter and this is water you cook with . We cook. Reporter you drink . We drink. Reporter you bathe . Yes. Reporter you feel confidence the water is good right now . It is good. Reporter if the well goes through. If the well goes through there is a possibility that this water may be tainted. Reporter but they say that the injection process will not taint your well. Its tainted others. Its tainted others. Its tainted water in pennsylvania, ohio, in new york. Reporter the durans along with several fans have gotten together to fight the proposed oil wells. They recently held a beachfront rally at the governors Vacation Home and turned their front yard in to a giant billboard. We are worried about the threemonth old next door. Yeah. You know, if the water is contaminated and you bathe a baby in that kind of without what, will happen five years down the road for this child . We need clean water, clean air. Its not political. Its a human rights issue, everybody deserves it. Reporter its not just humans the durans worry bench the oil well next to them would also be less than a mile from the Florida Panther National wildlife refuge. The refuge and the area surrounding it, is the last sanctuary for these endangered animals. There are days that i have been out here doing research where the colleagues and i, we have seen female mother panther with her two offspring and then 10foot alligators sitting right near there. Reporter ian is a biologist for the conservancy of southwest florida. A local environmental group. He took us to one place the panthers roam. A place where cameras are rarely allowed. Right now, we are just down the street from one of the proposed well sites and oddly enough, the government is spending is hundreds of millions of dollars to restore the everglades. This used to be a housing development. And now its being given back to nature. Southern Golden Gate Estates was going to be the largest subdivision in america. Home to half a million people. But when the development failed, some of those nearly extinction panthers moved in. The government has deemed this land more than 50,000 acres adjacent to the panther refuge, as vital to the survival of the everglades ecosystem. Its animals and plants depend on clean water. An Oil Well Accident just to the north could be disastrous. Lets say upstream from here there was some sort of a Chemical Spill or industrial accident. And it got in to the water up there. Would that affect this area as well . Biologically speaking. So if that water is moving and there was a major disturbance, quite likely that would have implications downstream. This is a pretty special place. Reporter the current search for oil isnt the first time this land has seen a rush to exploit its natural resources. Yeah, lets head up there. Reporter wow. This is an amazing spot. And an amazing organism. Reporter whats it called . Whats its technical name . This is a balanced cyprus, its an old growth cyprus tree, probably been here for 500 years, this forest used to go dominated by trees this size the logging element that came through removed 99. 9 of these trees here the few we find are scattered way out in the swamps and mostly hollow like this one. Reporter now its oil, not lumber, thats attracting industry to this unique landscape. But what a lot of people dont know, not even in florida, is that there is already oil drilling going on in the greater everglades. This area isnt open to the public, the National Park service gave us a special tour. Inning bound marker six. Marker six. Reporter about 25 miles from the newly proposed wells, several existing wells pump away day and night. They are located deep in the heart of the Big Cyprus National preserve. And so they have Drilling Operations taking part here on National ParkService Territory . Yes. Reporter and how many oil wells are here right now . Approximately seven, eight. Reporter don hargrove oversees oil and gas operations inside big cyprus, the new wells will use some of the same technology as these. Including injecting wastewater in to the ground. If you were to see dozens are more operations like this scattered throughout the greater everglades area, could that ecosystem hands that would . It depends on the operator, how responsible they are. It really does. Reporter overall, how do you feel this operation is run something. I think they have done a very good job over the years. I do. Reporter there is no telling if the Company Drilling the new wells would have the same approach. And there have been reports of leaks at some injection sites across the united states. But here, the park service regularly tests the water. And says it has never seen any evidence of contamination. Hargrove says at the worst, these wells are a shortterm eyesore. In your experience, have there been any environmental problems related to the oil drilling here so far in florida . In any impact on the surface, any construction, anything, you can consider that an impact. However, they usually are temporary. Yothey are not there forever. They are removed and restored at some point. Reporter believe it or not, less than 40 year old ago this used to be the site of an oil drilling operation. All of the equipment has been removed and its been turned back to nature. Some say this is proof that oil drilling can be done in an environmentally responsible manner. Others say it should have always looked like this. You may wonder why drilling is even allowed on National Park land. Well, the rights to the oil under much of big cyprus and some 800,000 acres across southwest florida belong to the descendants of baron collier, once the largest land own never the state. The Collier Companies are behind the new plans to drill. We left several necessary hess questionmessages withcollier cot unanswered so we came to their headquarters and i tracked down a company spokeswomen and she said they had no comments. In previous statements to the residents, they say the proposed oil wells will be safe. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection agrees. In a statement, they told us that the wells meet its requirements. Designed to protect fresh water aquifers, as for the panthers, it says the u. S. Fish and wildlife service, which runs the panther refuge, didnt have any objections to the proposed drilling. The durans arent buying it. They dont believe the thirst for oil justifies risking their slice of paradise. The well slated for the field next to their house still has at least one significant hurdle to clear, getting a permit from the federal e. P. A. If that happens, the durans arent sure what theyll do. They have already talked about moving. People get upset when the rain forest goes, but we are letting the everglades go. This is a special place. Would they let oil drilling in the grand canyon . Where are they going to stop . Is there anything sacred. Thats al jazerras adam may. Looking ahead to next week on our program. More trouble in the sunshine state. They can get you. Make your life miserable, you know, taunting you, harassing you, turning your water off. The police sitting outside your house every time you move. Those type things could really happen. Missing money, missing water, missing patrol cars, a mismanaged town all around. Al jazerras Sheila Macvicar brings us a southern gothic town of alleged sin and redemption in a florida town dubbed the most corrupt in america. Shell have her story monday on al jazerra. Coming up next in this hour, seeds of doubt. Is it a rare childhood disease or evidence of abuse . The dilemma facing doctors and worrying parents an indepth look at a disturbing medical syndrome next. Aljazeera america presents a break through Television Event borderland. Six strangers. Lets just send them back to mexico experience illegal immigration up close and personal. Its overwhelming to see this many people that have perished. Lost lives are relived. All of these people shouldnt be dead. Will there differences bring them together, or tear them apart. The only way to find out is to see it yourselves. Which side of the fence are you on . Borderland only on Al Jazeera America this is one of the worst things a parents can imagine. First learning that a child is seriously ill. But then that the doctors suspect its actually the parents causing the illness. It is rare, but it does happen. In massachusetts right now, there is a case making headlines involving parents who say they have been wrongly accused, still their daughter has been taken away from them for over a year, al jazerra correspondent lisa stark takes a look now at this complicated issue. Reporter mike many five year olds, gabriel is talkative, love rockets and wants to play. On this morning gabriel rarely slow downs even as he hauls around a back pub pump that gives him nutrition and drains his inning advertise 10. His mother says hes autistic and has a rare and poorly understood medical condition called might owe condrey el disease. They are diseases in which the part of the cell that produces energy to use doesnt work properly. The body doesnt make enough energy to keep the vital functions working. Reporter but as gabriel takes dozens of medications a day really sick . Some doctors were suspicious and accused hits mother of what used to be called munchausen by proxy now known as medical child abuse. Reporter how did you filed out that you were under sus spur. Unwhen the doctor shoulder up and said we were filing with dcfs. That was not a good way to find out. Reporter the massachusetts state Child Welfare agency. A doctor on the boston as Children Hospital called dcf to report the hill jarreds for possible medical child abuse. Medical child abuse say spec it up. On one end you have parents that exaggerate symptoms in their children. Thats a lot more innocent than the other end of the spectrum where parents actually induce illness, they inject them with things they suffocate them and actually harm their child in order to get the child to have more and more invasive and further medical care. When all a child with a disease that is not understood the doctors can be suspicious. When medical abuse really happens the way it presents is medical symptoms that nobody can explain. Reporter and the hilliards didnt have just one child with complicate the and controversial medical problems, they had two. Gabriels older system, was born with birth defects largely corrected through surgery. But she was then diagnosed with mitochondrial disorder which can run in families. You can see this was in the hospital, wasnt it . In the hospital. I was sitting in her bed and you cant see it but all of her tubes and wires come behind her and out. We did a really good job of concealing them for the picture. Reporter she says her daughter had a much more difficult case and developed multiple organ failure. She died just shy of her fifth birthday. Unlike his sister, gabriel was born with no apparent medical problems. But just a few months after losing their daughter, jessica and Shawn Hilliard were back at the hospital. This time with gabriel. Telling doctors he now seemed to be showing signs of the same illness that killed his sister. These are my daughters medical records. Reporter jessica says that for some Hospital Personnel that raised a red flag and the charge of medical child abuse. Its very difficult to describe exactly how dramatic that was for our family. It could be in the midst of grief of losing our child and be accused of harming one of our children statement it was an indescribable experience. It was terrible. Reporter she said she was sreflgdeinvestigatedded by the t just once, but twice. The state found the allegations unsupported and the investigations were closed. The second accusation came when they moved gabriel to a new hospital the allegations from the first doctors followed them. They called the Child Protection team at the new hospital and accused us a again. Reporter medical child abuse cases can be difficult to uncover and prove. These are often complex medical cases. They are not that common. But doctors at any large Childrens Hospital will tell you, they have seen them. Some estimates suggest medical child abuse makes up about 1,000 of the 2. 5 million cases of child abuse reported every year. But there are no reliable numbers. Because the abuse can take years to uncover and is often missed. Just and the man who prosecuted one of the nations most notorious cases, that of florida resident kathy bush. Her daughter jennifer, who had seemed constantly sick, was 11. When her mom went on trial. This is a chart we used in trial to show the injury how many days each month the child was in the hospital. Reporter during the years her child was untreatment kathy bush became a media darling and even attracted the attention of then first Lady Hillary Clinton who highlighted the familys struggle to tackle jennifers illnesses and pay mounting health care bills. Prosecutors found jessicas hospitalizations often coincided with her mothers fundraising events. You can see this unbelievable amount of time this child had to spend when realistically there was no medical justification for her being in the hospital at all. Reporter jessicas abuse only came to light when nurses in two hospitals stepped forward with suspicion about the mothers behavior and her interaction with jennifer. We documented 38 surgical procedures that had been performed on this child, some of them were very serious, such as removing parts of the intestine and the gallbladder and issues like that. Reporter they were able to prove to the injury that kathy bush had systematically overdosed her child with a powerful seizure medication. Bush was convicted in 2,000 sentence today five years in jail. As for jennifer, once removed from her mothers care, she was found to be perfectly healthy. One of the prosecution star witnesses was pediatrician and harvard professor dr. Eli knew burger, he says the evidence in the kathy bush was was enough to put her behind bars, but that doctors can report suspicions without much tangible evidence and families are left to defends themselves under intense scrutiny. So here is the question, if i am a doctor and i am at all concerned or suspicious, dont i want to era on thro side of helg that child, dont i want to report right way . This is the dilemma fa doctors. The threshold for mandated reporting where you have to make a report of suspicion of child abuse to a Child Protection agency, thats threshold is set very low. Reporter but should it be . Its got to be, because otherwise cases will not be brought to the attention that they should be. She was crying hysterical. The family was crying. Reporter a case now in the spotlight is that of 15yearold justina, of west hartford, connecticut. Doctorate bostons childrens reported her parents. The parents and another doctor insisted she needed treatment for might ow might owe might owl disease, doctors believed it was all in the childs head made worse by her parents. Massachusetts officials took custody of justina more than a year ago. Her mother was recently overcome after another failed attempt in court to win her daughter back. Its almost never black and white in the complex cases. Reporter new abouts burger consults occasions nationwide he has seen an Alarming Number of instances where he believes parents are wrongly accused hes the system is not set up to protect the children who are being harmed as well as families who have done no harm. Overworked Child Protection workers dont have the time to diligently review the cases and most importantly they dont have the money much less the will to get independent outside consultation. And as a consequence, tragic errors occur. On both sides. Reporter as for gabriel, hes still being treated for mitochondrial disease given the Family History of the disorder, there is not one definitive test for all patients so hillia