©2024 The News Service of Florida
An administrative law judge on Thursday scheduled a hearing in December in a legal fight about a plan to drill for oil and gas in part of rural Northwest Florida.
Judge Lawrence Stevenson issued an order scheduling the hearing Dec. 9 through Dec. 13 in Tallahassee.
The environmental organization Apalachicola Riverkeeper is challenging a draft permit that the Florida Department of Environmental Protection approved in April for Louisiana-based Clearwater Land & Minerals FLA, LLC, to drill an exploratory well in an unincorporated area of Calhoun County.
Apalachicola Riverkeeper contends that the project threatens the Apalachicola River and would be in the river’s floodplain.
But the department’s draft permit pointed to safeguards planned for the project.
Environmental conditions in the Apalachicola River have long been a high-profile issue.
The river is part of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system, which starts in northern Georgia, crosses into Alabama and ends in Apalachicola Bay in Florida.
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