Water crisis threatens Apalachicola oysters

Water crisis threatens Apalachicola oysters

The 18-year water war involving Florida, Alabama and Georgia is also 'Atlanta vs. the world' as the metropolitan area demands more water, which could threaten the ecology and economy downstream along the Apalachicola River.

Posted on Mon, Dec. 17, 2007

BY MARC CAPUTO
mcaputo@MiamiHerald.com

APALACHICOLA -- The endangered mussels are dying. Salt water parches the tupelo trees bees use to make honey. And the commercial shrimp harvest has faded along with many of the once-rich oyster banks where Bruce Rotella has scraped and scrapped a living for three decades.
The worst drought in years -- coupled with the water needs of booming Atlanta -- is leaving its scars on the people, animals and this shell-mound of a town's namesake stream, the Apalachicola River.
The politicians are in a bind, too. Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will host the governors of Alabama and Georgia at a meeting Monday about the waters of the river, formed at the junction of two other rivers that begin south and north of Atlanta and end at the Florida-Georgia line.

In the background of the talks: nearly 18 years of three-state water-war litigation over the management of the Apalachicola-Chatahoochee-Flint rivers system by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. If the course of the court fight is any predictor, the talks won't yield much.

That worries Bruce Rotella and the 1,100 oystermen here because time -- along with the water -- is running out as the corps reduces flows to historically low levels for the country's fifth-biggest river by volume to spill into the Gulf of Mexico.

''Except when hurricanes have hit, I've never seen it this bad. Things are good right now in a few spots. But they used to be good all over,'' says Rotella, ticking off the names of now-barren oyster banks where he remembers hauling up prize catches with each hefty basket clutched by his 10-foot, rake-like tongs.

The 107-mile river, its healthy waters and the shallow and protected bay into which it spills fuel the rapid growth of smooth-tasting oysters, the product of sunlight, river- and ocean-made flesh in the place locals call ''the Last Great Bay.'' About 10 percent of the oysters consumed in the nation and 90 percent of those eaten in Florida come from these waters.

The oyster's filter feeds and thrives with the tide and flow of both salt- and freshwater. The saltwater helps kill freshwater parasites and the freshwater blocks saltwater predators, like oyster drill snails, and parasites. If the water is the life's blood of the critters and economy, its flow is the pulse.

''You can't improve on that balance, on God's work. All man can really do is mess it up,'' says 50-year oysterman Bevin Putnal, a Franklin County commissioner who recalls catching oysters as big as a man's hand.

Putnal still goes out and tongs oyster, which are plentiful and profitable in some spots. For now. He says there will be enough for a few more years before things become as dire as they have for the shrimpers. The white shrimp are nowhere to be found. So the boats are tied up.

''No point paying for gas to look for something that ain't there,'' says shrimper Howard Horton, 62.

The people here noticed trouble in 2006 as the Army corps began cutting back freshwater flows to the river to ensure there was enough water in the system for cities, farmers and power-generating dams upstream. The flows, measured at the Jim Woodruff dam just south of the state line, were slashed between 50 and 75 percent starting in the summer months of 2006, according to Army corps data.

FLORIDA'S LAWSUIT
Florida sued, saying the minimum flow threshold of 5,000 cubic feet a second -- 2.24 million gallons a minute -- was too low. That's less than half the historic flow for this time of year, the dry season.

Florida also claims that a written opinion on the plan from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service allowed for too many endangered purple bankclimber and fat threeridge mussels downstream of the dam to be dried out and killed. Those mussels, along with the ancient Gulf sturgeon that spawns near the dam, are key to Florida's case.

The service and corps say that though the lower flow may harm the animals in the short term, storing the water in the system to ensure it doesn't run out entirely will help the species and all the other users in the long run.

Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue has cast this as a man vs. mussels fight that poses a shellfish-or-children choice. Georgia says the corps and wildlife service have sent too much downstream from the premier recreation and drinking-water reservoir, Lake Lanier, which helps supply much of Atlanta's water and accounts for a maximum 62.5 percent of the total water in the Apalachicola-Chatahoochee-Flint system.

As the drought worsened, turning marina wet slips to dry docks, Perdue even asked President Bush in October to exempt Georgia from the Endangered Species Act to draw more water. Crist opposed it.

U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who will also be at Monday's meeting, advanced a new emergency plan in a sit-down with Crist, Perdue and Bob Riley, the governor of Alabama, who has largely been on Florida's side. Alabama's stake: It taps into the water system and relies on electricity produced in some of the dams.

The new emergency plan reduced the minimum flow down to 2.14 gallons a minute -- and even lower in some circumstances -- a level Florida wildlife experts, officials and oystermen say is lower than too low.

Unknown to many: Flows fell below this lower-than-low standard for four out of the past six months. November had the lowest monthly flow, 2.06 million gallons a minute.

After the new flow standard was announced, Crist appeared to support it. The people of Franklin County were appalled, prompting Crist to quickly clarify that he opposed the new operating plan. In a later meeting with Franklin County officials, he said, ``I'm with you.''

But he hasn't shown up in town. A number of supporters, from county and city commissioners to one of the river's experts, Dan Tonsmeire of the Riverkeepers nonprofit advocacy group, say they're waiting to see what Crist does and how he'll handle Georgia's crafty governor, Perdue, who proved a tough match for Crist's predecessor, Jeb Bush.
Said Rotella: ``Charlie Crist needs to man up.''

`PRAYING FOR RAIN'
But Rotella isn't holding out much hope for a government solution and is ''praying for rain.'' After all, the problems with the river and bay are as much a problem with nature as they are with government. In the 1950s, government created the system of dams and gouged a navigational channel into the bay that oystermen say allowed more freshwater to escape. And government allowed Atlanta's growth to spill out with few limitations.

A University of Georgia study found that, from 2001 to 2006, metropolitan Atlanta added 55 acres of concrete, rooftops and parking lots daily as it sprawled outwardly and redeveloped inwardly with less planning for water-conservation, supply or reuse. The area led the nation in population growth from 2000 to 2006 by gaining 890,000 residents -- more than 80 times Franklin County's entire population. The birthplace of Atlanta -- at the head of a watershed rather than downstream -- is a more unfixable problem.

Though Gov. Perdue has imposed water restrictions and declared much of Georgia a disaster area, the measures probably won't be enough. Georgia's water planning has lagged for years and officials from two Georgia water-planning agencies said the state didn't have a good grasp on how much water Atlanta consumed from year to year since 2000.

''This isn't Georgia vs. Florida. This is Atlanta vs. the world,'' says Jerry Sherk, a water-law expert who once worked for Georgia and that state's city of LaGrange, which is more aligned with Florida's position. ``Atlanta has one negotiating position: We want more.''

FOR ATLANTA'S USE
Indeed, the lawsuits began in 1989 when Alabama sued because Georgia persuaded the corps to allocate more water for Atlanta's use.

Sherk and other experts say they don't expect a settlement any time soon, due to the competing issues, the web of state and federal laws and agencies governing the system and the fact that Congress must be involved. They say the U.S. Supreme Court might ultimately decide the case and set a precedent as changes in climate and population push water conflicts, once a problem plaguing just western states, eastward.

In such disputes, economic issues are key, meaning Atlanta's claim that its $5.5 billion economy is in danger could have far more weight than Florida's claim that its $200 million commercial fishing and oystering industry is threatened.

So Florida is also highlighting the endangered species and the hundreds of millions the state and federal government have spent to buy land and preserve the river and the tupelo and cypress trees plied by the birds and bees.

At the Bay City Lodge, an old cypress mill operation-turned-fish-camp where river otters from Poorhouse Creek eat the grouper scraps, owner Jimmy Mosconis says he's noticing more saltwater fish where the fresh ones used to be and he wonders how long the river can remain what it was.

If it changes, gets saltier and lower, oystermen like Rotella say they'll eventually have to leave for other banks in Texas and Louisiana.

''This is our bank. This is where we get money,'' he says.
``It's our way of life and our heritage. Those people in Atlanta need to know that. They need to share the pain.''