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The House State Affairs Committee Tuesday unanimously approved a proposal that seeks to protect Northwest Florida’s Apalachicola River by requiring some environmentally sensitive areas to be shielded from oil and gas drilling. The bill (HB 1143), which is ready to go to the full House, would, in part, ban oil and gas drilling within 10 miles of the state’s three National Estuarine Research Reserves — the Apalachicola reserve, the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve north of St. Augustine and the Rookery Bay reserve south of Naples. The bill also would direct the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to create a “balancing test” to determine whether to issue drilling permits near water bodies. The Apalachicola River and Apalachicola Bay are the focus of the bill, after the Department of Environmental Protection last year issued a draft permit for the Louisiana-based Clearwater Land & Minerals Fla. to drill an exploratory well in Calhoun County. A challenge to the draft permit is pending at the state Division of Administrative Hearings, as environmentalists argue the project threatens the Apalachicola River. House bill sponsor Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, represents Franklin County, which includes Apalachicola Bay, and pointed to economic dangers from a potential oil spill. “It will have been 15 years since the BP oil spill devastated our seafood economy and tourism economy. We’re still carrying those scars,” Shoaf said. “If just the threat can do that, you can imagine why thousands of locals in my district are up in arms about the threat of it happening again.” Eric Hamilton, a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, told the committee that the proposed 10-mile rule is “arbitrary” and would take away mineral rights without compensation for about 1 million acres of private property around the river. “So, essentially you’ll be devaluing their property,” Hamilton said. A Senate version of the bill (SB 1300) includes the proposed balancing test but does not include the 10-mile rule. That bill is scheduled to go before the Senate Agriculture, Environment, and General Government Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
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