TALLAHASSEE — A proposal aimed at protecting environmentally sensitive areas from drilling Tuesday amid a legal battle over efforts to drill for oil and gas near the Apalachicola River, the state capitol and Senate panels in northwestern Florida.
The House Bill (HB 1143) will go further than the Senate bill, including calling for a ban on drilling within 10 miles of the state’s three national estuary labs. Both bills create “balance tests” that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection must consider when deciding whether to issue drilling permits near waters.
One of the off-limits areas is within 10 miles of the river and the Apalachicola National Estuary Research Reserve around Apalachicola Bay in Franklin County.
House Building sponsor, Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, compared concerns about the ecological damage caused by local drilling to the impact of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil off the Gulf Coast.
“The oil didn’t reach us (from the Deepwater Horizon spill),” said Schauffe, a district that includes Franklin County. “But it killed our economy anyway, just a threat from it.”
Lawmakers are considering the issue last year after the Environmental Protection Agency approved a permit for Louisiana-based Clearwater Land & Minerals Fla and approved drilling exploratory wells in an unedited portion of Calhoun County near the Appalachicola River.
The environmental group Appalachicola River Keeper challenged draft permits, and the case is pending at a state administrative hearing.
House Natural Resources and Disasters unanimously approved the House bill on Tuesday. This has been supported by several people in the seafood industry.
Shoaf said after the meeting the bill would not suspend permits issued last year for exploratory drilling. However, he said it would prevent additional permits needed to commercially produce and sell oil from the site.
Two other national estuary research preparations affected by the House bill are the Guanatromatoma Tanza National Estuary Research Institute near St. Augustine and the Rookery Bay National Estuary Research Reserve near Naples.
Eric Hamilton, a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, told the House committee that his organization is concerned that the 10-mile limit on national estuary laboratories may have gone too far with mineral rights.
While relatively unusual for Florida, businesses have long been drilled for oil around Jay’s Santa Rosa County community and parts of southwest Florida. The project planned in Calhoun County is located at a site where excavations were previously permitted but not excavated.
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The state and federal governments are taking steps to protect the Apalachicola River and the Apalachicola Bay. They are part of the Appalachicola Chattahoochee Flint River system, starting in northern Georgia, and crossing to Alabama and ending in Appalachicola Bay on the Gulf Coast.
Environmentalists argue that planned drilling projects threaten the river and lie on the river’s flood plains.
The House and Senate bills include the same proposals required by the Environmental Protection Agency in determining drilling intake for sites within a mile of the coastline or other waters, “balancing measures to protect natural resources.”
“This balance test should assess the potential impacts of accidents or blow-offs on natural resources in waters and coastal areas, including impacts on ecological functions and water quality,” the bill says.
The Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources on Tuesday approved the Senate version (SB 1300).
