Residents along Florida's 'Forgotten Coast' worry about potential drilling threat
Residents along Florida's 'Forgotten Coast' worry about potential drilling threat
As the state moves closer to allowing exploratory oil drilling near the Apalachicola River, residents express their love for the river and commitment to keeping it clean.
Gripping an oyster knife in one hand and cradling a large, freshly harvested oyster in the other, Kung Li worked the knife along the shell’s edges until she reached the hinge, twisted the knife and pried open the shell.
“This is the greatest oyster in the world,” said Li, who spent last Saturday evening shucking oysters and serving them to residents and visitors at the Apalachicola Yacht Club. “It’s raised in the best water — it’s clean, and it’s full of nutrition.”
Throughout the evening, Li and her partner Xochitl Bervera served about 600 oysters that they had harvested the day before at their farm, Water is Life Oysters, located in Rattlesnake Cove. They donated half of the proceeds to the Apalachicola Riverkeeper, as part of the organization’s first annual Riverpalooza fundraiser to raise money for educational programs, waterway cleanups and advocacy work.
“You open the shell, so that people can enjoy them on the half shell,” Li said, as she cut loose its abductor muscle, removed the top shell and placed the bottom shell, filled with plump oyster meat, on a tray of ice.
Their oysters are raised in water that flows down the Apalachicola River and into the bay. “The reason the water is so clean is that there’s no industry along the Apalachicola River,” Li said. “You get a clean, fat, happy oyster.”
That’s the way residents near the coast say they like their water and their seafood — clean.
State environmental officials move closer to allowing drilling near the waterway
In April, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection signaled its intent to issue an exploratory oil and gas drilling permit to Clearwater Land and Minerals LLC. The permit would allow the company to drill about a mile from the Apalachicola River in the floodplain, where water often covers the ground when the river rises higher than usual.
The department recently gave the Apalachicola Riverkeeper until June 6 to file a petition challenging the potential drilling permit in response to the organization’s request for more time to file a legal challenge. If a challenge is filed and succeeds, the department could deny Clearwater’s drilling permit application.
The organization has expressed concern over the risk of toxic chemicals or equipment fuels used in the drilling process ending up in the river if the area floods or if an accident occurs.
“When we get high river levels, that river connects to that area. And then all that material can eventually get down into the creeks and get into all the other areas downstream,” said Apalachicola Riverkeeper Cameron Baxley. “And then ultimately ends up here in Franklin County.”
The DEP’s draft oil and gas drilling permit states that the company’s application includes “well control procedures, preventative measures, and contingency plans for responding to potential accidents and spills.”
“All permit applications are carefully evaluated under Florida law to ensure that all aspects of the operation will follow the law and are protective of the environment and human health and safety,” Brian Miller, DEP’s press secretary, wrote in an email.
Miller added that the drilling pad “is required to be constructed to withstand extreme weather conditions.”
The permit would allow exploratory drilling 2.6 miles below the ground’s surface, entering the Floridan aquifer system, which supplies freshwater to the river and other waterways in the region.
Even with the state-required safeguards in place, the risk that contaminants will reach the waterway through the surface water or the groundwater is high, Baxley said.
“When you've got that much connectivity in that area, and they're bringing in drilling mud that has toxins in it, there's a high risk that that those contaminants will find their way and leach their way into the river.”
Public opposition to drilling near the river is strong
Franklin County borders the Gulf of Mexico and is home to more than a million acres (or 1,870 sq. miles) of federal and state lands, including Tate’s Hell State Forest and the Apalachicola National Forest. The Apalachicola River flows through the county and empties into the bay, creating one of the most biodiverse estuaries in the U.S.
For many people who call the county home, life revolves around the area’s pristine waterways. The county’s population is 12,498 residents, the latest census data shows. Of that total, 2,395 people live in the county seat, Apalachicola, a tight-knit community bound together by a mutual love for the water and all that it provides.
At the yacht club, the love for the Apalachicola River was on display, as about 300 people stopped by throughout the day for Riverpalooza.
Marc Grove and Mark Olstein ate raw oysters straight from the half shell as they listened to upbeat New Orleans-style jazz, funk and blues from Tallahassee band the Funky Taters.
“We just had oysters from Alabama, and they were good, but they weren’t this good,” said Grove, who’s lived in Apalachicola for 25 years. “They let them grow longer, so they’re bigger, which I like.”
Olstein lives in Carrabelle, a small coastal town located about 20 miles east of Apalachicola. He grew up in South Florida and spent some time in Atlanta before moving back to the Sunshine State to settle along the ‘Forgotten Coast,’ a largely undeveloped stretch of coastline that starts in Mexico Beach in eastern Bay County and extends across Gulf, Franklin and Wakulla Counties.
“I moved here because it’s ‘Old Florida’,” Olstein said, using a common term to describe areas of the state before resorts and high-rise condo buildings took over the shorelines of coastal towns and cities. “We like to be like ‘Old Florida,’ not like Destin or Panama City.”
Olstein and Grove are also opposed to drilling near the river. “We’re not fans of that,” Grove said. “We like our bay like it is.”
“The public’s mad. And for whatever reason, they were not very well-notified, and once we helped get the word out, there was fierce public opposition.”
Jessica Bright and her husband Brian Bright drove to Apalachicola from Panama City to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary in the small oyster town. They walked to the yacht club from the hotel where they were staying after hearing live music playing down the block and ordered a platter of oysters. “If you would’ve asked me twenty years ago if I would eat raw oysters, I’d say absolutely not,” she said. “But since moving to the Gulf Coast, I’ve really fell in love with them, and these are some of the best that I’ve had.”
“They’re flavorful. They’re juicy,” she said. “They’re so good, so fresh.”
Bright says her husband, who typically prefers cooked oysters, also loved the raw farm-fresh oysters they ordered.
“The first raw oyster I ever had was an Apalachicola Bay oyster when I was about ten years old,” he said. “I came to visit with my grandparents, while they were on vacation. Now, I'm forty-two years old, and I'm back and I'm glad I can eat Apalachicola Bay oysters again, even if they are farmed instead of wild.”
Jessica Bright says she had no idea that a fundraiser for the Riverkeeper was taking place, but she was excited to support the cause. “I’m just really happy to see that there are this many people out for an environmental festival.”
When asked about the plan to allow drilling near the river, Bright said she thinks it’s a bad idea. “The age of fossil fuels is over,” she said. “We need to be spending our energy looking for other sources of energy.”
As of Saturday, at least 1,152 residents in the Big Bend region and across the state had written to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, voicing opposition to the drilling permit — only one resident wrote in support of the plan, public records show.
The Downriver Project is among the nonprofit organizations that worked to notify the public about the potential drilling permit in April. “We spread the word very quickly,” said Gil Damon, director of the group, which started in Wakulla County.
The organization’s website describes its work this way: “We unite fishermen, hunters, oyster farmers, faith leaders, troublemakers, and misfits to defend the waters that all of us depend on.”
Within about a week, about 700 people submitted public comment to DEP through the group’s email system, Damon said. “Once people became aware of this, DEP received more comments on this subject in opposition than all previous oil permitting applications in the state of Florida combined,” he said. That’s according to an analysis of public records dating back to 2016.
“The public’s mad,” Damon said. “Once we helped get the word out, there was fierce public opposition.”
A lot of the opposition comes from Franklin, Gulf and Wakulla Counties, Damon said.
Calhoun and Franklin County Commissions are at odds over potential drilling near the river
The Apalachicola River flows down from Georgia through six counties in the Panhandle. Drilling would take place about a mile from the river in Calhoun County if the permit is issued. That could potentially affect downstream communities in Gulf, Liberty and Franklin Counties.
The Franklin County Commission urged DEP to deny Clearwater’s drilling permit application in a letter sent to the department in April. “The economy of Franklin County and the ecology of the Apalachicola River and Bay are closely connected,” they wrote. “Our residents rely on a healthy bay for commercial fishing and tourism, which includes recreational fishing and numerous beach-related activities.”
Commissioners outlined several reasons for their opposition to the well, including the risk of toxins entering the river during periods of heavy rains, flooding, hurricanes and other extreme weather events, the inherent risk of chemicals entering the wetlands surrounding the drilling site and the use of thousands of gallons of water from the river in the drilling process. “This well threatens the river and bay system, closely woven with our region’s economy and heritage.”
In December, the Calhoun County Commission voted in favor of the drilling permit application (4-0) without discussion. Commissioner Gene Bailey, who made the motion for the vote, explained that the board’s support is due to the potential “economic benefit that it would bring to a fiscally-constrained county.”
The county’s major industry was timber harvesting, but that was decimated by Hurricane Michael. “We have no four-lane highways. We have no beachfront property. We have no manufacturing, no railroad,” he said. “If the timber industry was thriving, I’d have the same position.”
Bailey says he’s hopeful that they’ll find oil, which could increase the county’s revenues. “If they don’t hit oil, it’s not going to help us.”
The likelihood of finding oil at the site is low, as wells in Calhoun County and the surrounding area, including Gulf and Franklin Counties, have come up dry since 1945, state oil and gas drilling data shows. In North Florida, oil has only been found in Santa Rosa and Escambia Counties, which are located more than a hundred miles west of the area where drilling is under consideration.
In 2019, the department issued six permits to Cholla Petroleum to explore for oil in Calhoun County, including at the site that’s under consideration now, but drilling never took place. “The company that was going to be the ones to do the drilling, they walked away,” said Apalachicola Riverkeeper Cameron Baxley. “The guy that was sort of leading the charge on it, who was heading everything up, he actually died in a car accident.”
Oyster farmers speak out against possible drilling
About five years ago, Jeff Wren, owner of Rattlesnake Cove Oyster Company, became one of the first oyster farmers to get approved for a license in Apalachicola Bay.
Right now, he has about 350,000 oysters growing in floating baskets across three acres of water in Rattlesnake Cove, Wren said. “They float on the surface of the water, on lines.”
Wren says he’s opposed to allowing drilling near the river because it could put his business at risk. “Clean water is extremely, extremely important.”
And that doesn’t apply only to his business, he added. “Whether it’s the local tourist shops, or guide fishermen, house rentals, everyone’s business pretty much revolves around clean water down here as a tourist destination on the beach.”
Wren and other oyster farmers have expressed concern about possible contamination in the bay if drilling is allowed near the river upstream.
“Most chemicals, oil, any kind of petroleum, floats on top of the water,” said Wren, who’s a retired marine scientist. “Since our oysters are also floating on top of the water, it’s not ideal.”
Apalachicola Bay has become a popular location for oyster farming, especially after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission implemented a five-year suspension on wild-oyster harvesting in 2020, while work is done to help rebuild oyster reefs. For decades, the area was famous for its wild oysters and supplied 90% of the oysters in Florida and 10% of the nation’s oysters.
As of August, at least 108 licensed shellfish farmers were registered to operate in Wakulla, Franklin and Gulf Counties, data from the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services shows. More than half of those licenses — 62 — were issued in Franklin County.
“A significant portion of our membership is concentrated up in this area,” said Adrianne Johnson, executive director for the Florida Shellfish Aquaculture Association.
Johnson has heard from many farmers who are concerned about the possibility of fuel or other harmful chemicals ending up in waters just off the coast if drilling takes place.
“Oysters are filter organisms,” she said. “They would filter anything that gets into the water, and that could have a devastating impact and kill entire crops.”
Contamination could also make it more difficult for farmers to bring their harvest to market, Johnson explained. “No one is going to buy an oyster that is potentially been exposed to harmful chemicals.”
Hunter Cowie is a manager at Florida Oyster Farms, which is also located in Rattlesnake Cove. It’s bigger than some of the small farms in the area with seven full-time employees. The farm’s owner also has a local distribution company in Apalachicola called Water Street Seafood, which packages and sells oysters to restaurants and stores and has about 60 full-time employees.
Cowie, who lives in Crawfordville in neighboring Wakulla County, says he’s very much opposed to efforts drilling near the river. “It could potentially ruin the company,” he said. “It would be absolutely devastating.”
The farm has been in operation for about three years, he said. Like all of the oyster farms in the cove, it relies on the river.
“Without a river, we couldn’t have an operation to begin with,” he said. “The state would shut us down immediately if there were contaminants in the water.”
And that “would put a lot of people out of work.”
Elected officials voice opposition to drilling near the river
Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed a measure into law, allowing the state Department of Environmental Protection to spend $25 million over a five-year period to improve water quality in and around Apalachicola Bay.
State Sen. Corey Simon (R-Tallahassee) and state Rep. Jason Shoaf (R-Port St. Joe) — who represent Franklin County — sponsored the legislation. Both lawmakers have spoken out against the department’s support for drilling near the river.
“It is unconscionable that efforts to drill for oil are happening at the same time that we are fighting for the revitalization of the Apalachicola Bay,” Simon wrote in a statement four days after the department issued a notice of intent to issue a drilling permit. “We cannot allow the actions of one irresponsible body to impact the limited precious natural resources that belong to the entire region.”
Shoaf said he “would adamantly oppose any exploration that would destroy this precious ecosystem,” referring to the Apalachicola Bay. He added that he’s been in contact with DEP regulators to “ensure that our laws, rules and processes in place are strictly adhered to for the protection of our environment and the safety of Florida families.”
Additionally, Shoaf said that he plans to meet with environmental protection groups to explore policy ideas that could protect the bay from potential threats in the future.
“It may be necessary to pursue additional policy enhancements that ensure our beloved bay and springs remain safe and protected in perpetuity,” Shoaf said. “As lawmakers, we must update the policies so the state agencies can enforce them.”
As of now, there’s no state law in place that bans drilling in the river’s floodplain, which is where the proposed drilling site is located. At least one candidate for state office wants to work on changing that if elected.
Simon’s Democratic challenger Daryl Parks says he’s been following the issue closely since December when Calhoun County commissioners expressed their support for the drilling permit application.
Parks has called for a ban on drilling in the Apalachicola River Basin, where the proposed drilling site is located, and all river basins in North Florida.
“Making sure that these types of exploratory actions do not take place is pretty important,” Parks said in an interview with The Panhandle Press. “I think voters are looking for a candidate who’s ready to lead, in particular on the environment, and I’m that candidate.”
Simon did not respond to five requests for an interview to discuss where he stands on his opponent’s proposal for a ban on drilling near waterways in the region.
Residents along Florida’s ‘Forgotten Coast’ unite in opposition to possible drilling near the river
Port St. Joe resident Kim Miller says she’s looking forward to October, when she’ll paddle 107 miles down the Apalachicola River, as part of the Apalachicola Riverkeeper’s annual RiverTrek. Miller says she’s completed the five-day expedition twice before — in 2021 and 2022.
“Gosh, it gets in your soul,” Miller said, when asked about her relationship to the river.
The RiverTrek begins at the Jim Woodruff Dam near the Florida-Georgia line and ends in the Apalachicola Bay. Along the way, kayakers learn about the plants and animals that thrive in and around the river and the history of the communities near its banks.
“Every evening, we stop and we camp out on sandbars,” she said. “We learn about that particular location and what the history of it was there.”
“It's just a great time to commune with the river, but it's also a great opportunity to get to know people from other walks of life,” Miller said. “No matter what they do professionally or where they live, the one common denominator is the love for the ecology here and for the protection of the river.”
One of the biggest lessons she’s learned about the river is “how fragile it all is,” Miller said. “One decision made by local politicians could affect everything.”
Miller says she’s opposed to drilling near the river for many reasons, including the dangerous precedent that it could set. “You're also setting a precedent for other developers and other people to come in — and it's greed-driven.”
She also fears what would happen if oil is discovered, Miller said. “What if they do hit oil?” she said. “They have to get equipment in there, build the roads, build the infrastructure, everything in there to migrate it out, to transport it.”
“It'll kill tourism,” Miller said. “It's just not worth the risk.”
Caitlin McCauley lives in Apalachicola eight months out of the year, when she’s not bicycling across the U.S. or through a foreign country. McCauley has also kayaked down the river as part of the RiverTrek. “It really helped me familiarize myself with the Apalachicola River,” said McCauley, who took the trip last year.
“We spend five days kayaking down the Apalachicola River, meeting with various historians and folks who live along the river and neighboring communities. And that really just shed a lot of insight and helped increase my appreciation for what a gem we’re really in right now.”
McCauley, who’s originally from Chicago, discovered Apalachicola about six years ago while bicycling across the region. “I took a train down to Jacksonville, and I started bicycling towards New Orleans, and kind of stumbled upon the town along the way, and spent two nights and fell in love with it, and wound up picking up a job at a coffee shop.”
McCauley was among the residents who wrote to DEP to speak out against the proposed drilling permit. “I’m really concerned, especially if there was to be an oil leak,” she said. “Our bay is incredibly fragile right now with the water wars that are going on with Alabama and Georgia.”
For decades, the three states have fought over the allocation of water in the shared Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin. Residents along the Apalachicola River say that the water flow has reduced over the years as a result of Georgia pulling water out of the system to supply drinking water to the growing population in the Atlanta metropolitan area.
McCauley often participates in the Riverkeeper’s frequent cleanup events, including one that took place last Saturday before Riverpalooza.
In addition to the area’s natural beauty, she loves the strong sense of community in the small, tight-knit town, McCauley said.
“It's so sweet,” she said. “You go to the local Piggly Wiggly and you're almost certainly going to see a friend or four just on the walk there or inside of the place.”
Susan Anderson, who grew up in Apalachicola, helped start the Apalachicola Riverkeeper in 1998 and served as its first executive director. Twenty-five years later, she’s back leading the organization after stepping into the role at the start of May. “This isn’t a job for me,” Anderson said. “It’s a work of passion.”
Anderson says she spent her early childhood on the river, growing up at the end of Bluff Road, between where “it gets swampy up river and swampy downriver.”
“I grew up swimming in that river every day and going hunting with my daddy and frogging and fishing,” she said. “It matters to me in a deep, heartfelt way.”
“I care very much about the future,” Anderson said, adding that she wants others to grow up, “seeing the mayflies hatch, watching the moths hanging from the trees and the bass jump up to catch them and then all of the mushrooms in the swamp and then the crawfish and turtles nesting and the mussels that are in the river.”
Her parents owned a hunting and fishing lodge in Apalachicola, giving her a first-hand look at the importance of tourism for the families who live in the area, Anderson said.
“People come from all over the world to visit and to spend time and to go hunting and fishing and bird-watching and enjoying the nice, natural benefits of the system,” she said. “All of that brings economic opportunity to the communities along the river.”
The area is one of six biodiversity hotspots in the nation and feeds into one of the most ecologically productive estuaries in the Northern Hemisphere.
There’s a lot of uncertainty about the level of toxicity of the chemicals that would be used to explore for oil, Anderson said. “But we do know that in the drilling process itself, there are naturally-occurring radioactive substances within the strata, and they will be bringing those to the surface in a sludge,” she said. “They will be using an acid formation to cut through the rock, and they will be extracting large volumes of water.”
Residents in Franklin County aren’t the only ones who could be directly affected by drilling near the river. Port St. Joe, in neighboring Gulf County, gets its drinking water from the Chipola River, which is connected to the Apalachicola River, and draws water from the basin.
Additionally, the Floridan aquifer supplies drinking water to the region, which would be drilled into if the permit is approved, explained Gil Damon, director of the Downriver Project.
“Anytime you're going to store large amounts of hazardous chemicals on top of an aquifer and push them through a tube through the aquifer, there are concerns that you get pollution both in the aquifer but also — in the event of a flood, or in the event of just mismanagement — spillage out into the floodplain and ultimately, into the river and ultimately into the bay.”
Contamination in the bay puts small local businesses and the bay area’s oyster economy at risk, explained Xochitl Bervera, owner of Water is Life Oysters. She says that’s especially important as work is done to rebuild oyster reefs for wild oyster harvesting.
"Aquaculture is one of the best ways we have to be providing oysters locally in a place where oysters are so important, while also letting the wild reefs rest and recover and restore, which is what people have spent so much time and effort and sacrifice to have happen.”
Bervera says local farmers like her are “investing in a future for this area that isn't just dependent on resort-based tourism, but that is about a local food economy.”
“People can make a living growing food, selling food, cooking food,” she said.
That requires pushing back against oil companies and big developers and protecting the area’s natural resources instead, Bervera added.
“We're not just here for our good times and love of nature, but really wanting to see a future for the young people here that looks different,” she said. “Part of it is to reject these kinds of big proposals — and proposals from companies that both promise and don't deliver — and invest in local food systems.”
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Corrections: A previous version of this article misspelled Marc Grove’s last name. It’s Grove, not Trove. A previous version of this story stated that the Apalachicola Riverkeeper is “likely” to file a petition challenging the permit, but the Riverkeeper says that it’s continuing to review the permit application with their legal team.