Contamination could make large chunks of NWFL waters off-limits for oyster farming

This story has been updated to reflect that the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services does not use remote sensors, and FDACS staff routinely collect water samples from local waterways that are tested for the presence of bacteria. 

The state is planning to reduce the areas of where oysters can be farmed and harvested in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties as rising bacteria levels contaminate more and more of the coastline.

A proposed rule change by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services would expand areas in which the harvesting of shellfish is prohibited within Pensacola, Escambia, Blackwater bays and the adjacent East Bay.

Local business owners and oyster harvesters who rely on the harvesting of oysters say the state has given them no reason to believe the rule change will not go into effect by year's end and the change is yet another sign of just how polluted local waterways have become.

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FDACS staff routinely collect water samples in local bays, which are tested in an Apalachicola lab for level of Coliform bacteria. Such samples recently revealed bacteria in quantities deemed unsafe for growing oysters for human consumption.

"The bacterial counts in the water samples from stations in this area have been increasing so we are revising the management plan for this area to protect the public health with respect to shellfish consumption," according to a FDACS statement sent to the News Journal.

The proposed rule amendments will reclassify some shellfish harvesting areas to "protect the health of shellfish consumers and to provide access to renewable shellfish resources," according to FDACS proposal for the rule change.

Local oyster farmers and other stakeholders say the impending rule changes will nearly double the size of local waters' prohibited oyster harvesting zones, though they did not provide an estimated size of the impacted area.

"The only reason that I could see that the rule change would be derailed is if somehow they were able to find out that their data was flawed in some way. Otherwise, this is the process — the law — that has been established in order to protect public health, and it's working the way it should work," said environmentalist Christian Wagley, coastal organizer for Florida-Alabama for Healthy Gulf.

Searching for solutions

When Shana Alford, owner of Avalon Aquaculture, began her business, she selected an area of water just off the Garcon Peninsula shoreline in the East Bay to grow her oysters.

She anticipates the new zones prohibiting oyster harvesting will encompass her original location, and she has already recently moved her business from East Bay to the Escambia Bay.

"I'm in Escambia Bay now, which is not my ideal location," Alford said. "I (originally) chose East Bay because this was one of the most pristine bodies of water that is left in the United States. So, it's really sad and tragic and (I) hope in the future that we can reopen."

Alford was part of a collective of local business owners, fisherman and concerned citizens who signed their names to a statement calling for local, state and federal officials' help in addressing increasing levels of bacterial contamination found in Pensacola and surrounding bays.

"Our outdated and already stressed infrastructure cannot handle the people we have, let alone the additional stressors like population increase, clear cutting and increased storm activity," Alford said at a press conference Tuesday featuring members of the collective. "Solutions to this problem include living shorelines, wetland buffers, updating storm water sewage treatment."

Organizations such as the Santa Rosa County Watershed Protection Committee, Santa Rosa County Citizens Coalition, Alliance 4 Healthy Beaches and Clean Water, Coalition 4 Santa Rosa's Water Future and the Navarre Residents for Reasonable Development lent support and signatures to the collective call for help.

They collectively drafted and signed a statement calling upon county and state officials to take the following three measures to help stem the spread of the contamination and perhaps correct it in the future:

• To fund and initiate additional research to pinpoint the specific sources of elevated bacteria levels in these areas.
• To dedicate staff and other resources toward identifying the most cost-effective solutions for reducing bacteria levels. That could include the expansion of sewer service to low-lying and waterfront areas and better storm water controls, among other solutions.
• FDACS should continue to monitor bacteria levels inside the new prohibited areas. Such monitoring could reveal future improvements in water quality that could allow these areas to reopen to shellfish harvest.

Pasco Gibson, longtime oysterman, lifelong water enthusiast and current commercial fisherman who spoke at Tuesday's press conference, said he'd watched over the years as the western Panhandle's once prosperous oyster industry collapsed before his eyes.

"What was once a viable oyster industry has dribbled away to next to nothing now, simply due to water quality issues," Gibson said. "I am 100% convinced that's the sole reason oysters are not thriving in our areas anymore."

The members of the collective at Tuesday's press conference are not contesting the need to restrict harvesting zones.

"Because of the continuous high fecal counts in these areas, they had no choice but to close this," Gibson said. "The threshold for contamination with an oyster is much higher than it is for you to go swim in it. But this should be the first indicator that, 'Hey, we're not on the right track here. We're going backwards.'"

Gibson said sewage and septic tanks' runoff is what is causing high fecal counts in Escambia County and Santa Rosa County bays.

"Nowhere down on this bay is there a sewage system. Yet we are permitting ground systems daily everywhere just to leach off into the bay, and that's what's happening. You can do a study all you want, but I can show you in five minutes what's going on there."

If he had the power, Gibson said his No. 1 priority would be to force municipalities to install sewer systems for the residences bordering, near and built directly on local waterfronts.

"If they're going to issue a building permit on a coastal area, there needs to be sewage in place," he said.

Dara Hartigan, president of the environmental group Save Our Soundside, also weighed in.

"The leaching of septic tanks has detrimental effects to our waterways, but we don't think that's the whole story," Hartigan said. "We believe that there is collateral damage being caused by clearcutting, by the runoff of sediment and chemicals and everything into our waterways and that this collateral damage is having an overall detrimental effect on all of our waterways.

She added, "We've got to come together as a community and hold our political leaders to account."

Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at colinwarrenhicks@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.