An oil drilling bill that got final approval from the Florida Legislature this week had strong support from both sides of the political aisle.
“We don’t have to choose between energy security and food security. We can have both. This bill does that,” said Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, during discussion of the bill.
A key lawmaker behind the proposal is Rep. Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, whose family has been in the natural gas business for decades.
“But I also felt that put it on my plate and made it my responsibility to run this bill,” Shoaf said in committee discussion. “In Apalachicola, we have an area of critical state concern.”
The bill would ban oil and gas drilling within 10 miles of the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve. The Senate changed the proposal so that it only applies in counties designated by the governor as rural areas of opportunity. That limits the zone to areas around the Apalachicola River and Bay in Calhoun, Franklin, Gulf, and Liberty counties.
The bill also calls for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) to consider certain criteria when deciding whether to issue drilling permits near water bodies.
“This balancing act will give DEP the clarity it needs, and it tells them that they should consider all of these extra factors before permitting is allowed,” Shoaf said. “We want them to pay attention to the potential impacts to the environment, the potential impacts to the economy.”
An administrative law judge this week said the state should have rejected a permit for a Louisiana-based company to drill for oil near the Apalachicola River. The judge said FDEP did not adequately consider the sensitive nature of the area.
The nonprofit advocacy group Apalachicola Riverkeeper filed a challenge last year after the department issued a draft permit for an exploratory well in an unincorporated part of Calhoun County. The permit was approved for a site that is within the 100-year floodplain of the Apalachicola River and within a mile of two ponds connected to the river.
“(FDEP) took a very limited and effectively ham-handed approach to the information that had been provided in the application and its traditional understanding of what a floodplain is in particular,” says Craig Diamond, a member of the Apalachicola Riverkeeper Board of Directors. “They looked at the drilling site effectively as a postage stamp of slightly elevated dirt in the larger 100-year floodplain of the Apalachicola River.”
We talk much more about the lawsuit and the legislation on Speaking Of. Click LISTEN above to hear the entire segment.
