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The House on Wednesday gave final approval to a proposal aimed at preventing oil drilling near Northwest Florida’s Apalachicola River and Apalachicola Bay. The House unanimously passed the bill (HB 1143), which was approved last week by the Senate. It is ready to go to Gov. Ron DeSantis. The bill was filed after the Florida Department of Environmental Protection last year approved a draft permit for a Louisiana-based company to drill an exploratory well in Calhoun County near the Apalachicola River. Environmentalists filed a challenge to the permit, and an administrative law judge this week recommended that the permit be rejected — though the issue must go back to the Department of Environmental Protection for a final decision. The bill would effectively prevent drilling within 10 miles of the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve. Earlier versions of the bill also would have prevented drilling near the Guana Tolomato Matanzas reserve north of St. Augustine and the Rookery Bay reserve south of Naples. But the Senate narrowed the bill to address only the Apalachicola region. “The reason I filed the bill was to protect Apalachicola Bay, and the amendment they (senators) sent over accomplishes that,” bill sponsor Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, said Wednesday.
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