Downriver in the News
Since 2021, Downriver Project volunteers have fought and won against:
Repeated efforts by SunStop Oil to build a 16-pump gas station and car wash on the Wakulla Springs cave
A county-led proposal to dump municipal wastewater into a protected water supply through a land deal with a former county commissioner
A developer’s plan to install 88 outdated septic tanks in the bullseye of the Wakulla Springs basin, leaving taxpayers to clean up the mess
Media outlets have covered some of these efforts, often referring to our earlier nickname of “Clean Water Wakulla.” Read excerpts below.
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What was planned to be a 16-pump gas station on environmentally sensitive land is now on the way to becoming preserved greenspace the size of Tallahassee’s Tom Brown Park.
Thank the Florida Legislature's budget negotiators.
The final 2024-25 state budget to be voted on this Friday includes $3.7 million for Conservation Florida to buy 225 acres at the intersection of U.S. 319 and State Road 267, 14 miles south of the Capitol in Wakulla County. Gov. Ron DeSantis would have to sign off on the expenditure.
…Two years ago, the SunStop Oil Company announced plans to build a gas station at the site – four miles west of Wakulla Springs, the world’s largest known freshwater spring, and an international tourist attraction whose jungle-like ambience has been used for background in horror and disaster movies.
When the Wakulla County Commission met to approve a zoning ordinance to allow the gas station, car wash and convenience store development, an audience of more than 400 people turned out in 119-degree heat, filling the commission chamber and parking lot behind the courthouse.
But the zoning item was pulled from the meeting agenda and the project has remained stalled.
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The largest turnout for a Wakulla County Commission meeting anyone can remember coupled with excessive heat produced a stunning victory Monday night for a coalition of spring defenders.
They were able to delay and possibly derail plans by the Southwest Georgia Oil Company to construct a mega-gas station four miles from the famed Wakulla Springs.
The announcement that the commission was pushing the pause button on an amendment to the comprehensive plan and a request to change the zoning of a parcel came after less than 30 minutes of public testimony in opposition to the proposal.
About 400 people turned out in 100 degree temperatures for Monday's meeting of the Wakulla County Commission
The parcel of land at issue is currently zoned for agriculture and sits above a serpentine cave through which an underground river flows and connects the aquifer to Wakulla Springs, the world's largest known freshwater spring.
This is the second time the rezoning request and comprehensive plan change have been tabled after a large turnout to a commission meeting.
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WAKULLA SPRINGS, FLORIDA — Plans to build a gas station complex directly over Chip’s Hole Cave, a blue-water source leading directly to Wakulla Springs, has local residents up in arms.
Wakulla Springs is one of the world’s largest and deepest freshwater springs. Its sapphire waters are home to manatees, alligators and other wildlife – a popular tourist destination for a century.
Now, Southwest Georgia Oil Company wants to build a large 16-pump gas station complex with a car wash and convenience store over a sensitive water source – a cave below the ground that feeds the springs with fresh water.
“If you drop a ping pong ball in this cave, it will pop up in Wakulla Springs eight days later,” says retired Wakulla Springs park manager Pete Scalco, who is part of the coalition fighting the project.
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A majority of Wakulla Commissioners are racing ahead with zoning changes — while stifling public comment — which will allow a gas station to be built on top of one of the amazing underwater caves which supplies the crystal-clear water that makes Wakulla Springs so special.
The awful plan calls for 16 gas pumps and petroleum storage tanks placed on top of a limestone cave that could collapse into a sinkhole at any time, spilling its contents into the pristine waters of Wakulla.
One gallon of gas can poison a million gallons of groundwater.
This is insane.
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I’m particularly alarmed by the Wakulla County administrator blatantly misrepresenting DEP’s position to the commissioners. He told them that DEP “wouldn’t approve” the higher regulations that so many residents wanted. Comprehensive planning laws give the commission the power to protect important natural resources.
The administrator confused regulatory laws with planning laws. When a reporter contacted DEP, they said the exact opposite was true. Here’s the full quote: “The authority to enact a local ordinance — such as the proposed Wakulla Springs Water Quality Protection Regulation — rests solely with the county.”
The county has the authority to adopt more protective measures for natural resources and the state doesn’t have to approve it, just allow it to be adopted.
Our state and local leaders should not put the community through this gas station charade once again. Subjecting Wakulla Springs to environmental contamination was not a good idea in 1995 and is not a good idea today.
When local government moves this fast, it’s usually for one reason – they don’t want the public to be fully aware of what is happening.
I salute the residents and advocacy groups mobilizing to oppose this effort. There is simply no way a gas station – a gas station – should be located over this cave and threaten the Springs that have been such a cherished memory for so many Floridians and at least one former DEP director for so many years.
With passion, I say: Please stop this gas station rezoning and protect Wakulla Springs.
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Next year will mark the 70th anniversary of the “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” portions of which were filmed in Wakulla Springs.
Metaphors never looked so scary.
In case you have missed the news, a Georgia gas station company is intent on building a new mega-station on top of an underwater cave that feeds the Springs. Wakulla County Commissioners will consider the matter at a Monday afternoon meeting.
Environmentalists — and anyone with common sense — fear this could lead to a disaster that turns Wakulla Springs into a literal black lagoon.
Southwest Georgia Oil is the company, and it manages gas stations like Inland and Sunstop. Unfortunately, its track record reads like a horror movie script. As of April 2022, the company is responsible for 44 historically contaminated gas station facilities. In Quincy, a SW Georgia Oil gas station was found in 2019 to be the source of a petroleum spill that spread a quarter mile.
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Concerned citizens organized community forum sessions to explore alternative proposals that could gain approval.
The people who gathered to hammer out a proposed ordinance included “fishing and aquaculture experts, professors, divers, retirees, scientists,” the Wakulla paper reported. One key part of the ordinance called for petroleum tanks to be set back from the underground caverns.
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Not only had the commissioners bought land from one of their former colleagues, Damon explained, but the county’s analysis of the property made no mention of the fact that it is full of sinkholes, as is the property next door. That’s particularly bad, Damon said, because the county’s original plan called for a disposal method of basically dumping the wastewater straight into the aquifer.
I checked with an expert on that subject.
“I went down to the site and it was very obviously full of sinkhole lakes,” hydrologist Doug Barr, former executive director of the Northwest Florida Water Management District, told me. The sinkholes show that Moore’s former property sits atop a type of limestone geology known as karst that’s full of holes, allowing water and other liquids to shoot through it with little to stop them.
Put that treated wastewater there, Barr said, and everything in it is likely to show up in nearby residents’ drinking water wells. That includes pharmaceuticals and cancer-causing chemicals, neither of which are removed during the sewage treatment process.
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Springs advocates are simmering to a boil over Wakulla County’s apparent plans to divert wastewater to a porous plain four miles from the world’s largest known freshwater spring.
The county commission agreed to spend a quarter of a million dollars to design and construct an artificial wetland to filter effluent on 100 acres at U.S 98 and Spring Creek Highway, known locally as the Moore property.
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Pollute, pay, repeat. That’s the governing rhythm in Wakulla County, as taxes are paid so developers can pollute. Now, locals are fighting back.
How the Scheme Works
First, the Wakulla County government takes state funding to remove high-polluting residential septic tanks, especially in zones where the groundwater is closely connected to Wakulla Springs. The Department of Environmental Protection pays millions to connect these homes to a clean public sewer system. On paper, this successfully removes nitrogen pollution and protects North Florida’s most treasured spring.
But here’s the catch: After spending millions of state dollars to remove septic tanks, Wakulla’s commissioners allow more septic tanks into the same area. That way, taxpayers, not housing developers, have to pay the steep cost of connecting to the sewer system. The cycle repeats and the water stays dirty.
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Septic tanks are a big water pollution problem around Florida. The state is spending millions of tax dollars converting old septic tanks over to connections to sewer plants or better septic systems.
Gil Damon of Clean Water Wakulla told me last week that one of the places where the state’s doing that is in Wakulla County. The Watkins development, he said, “is within a mile of where they’re doing a current septic to sewer conversion project.”
A June letter from the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity to Wakulla’s commissioners makes the Watkins project sound even worse. It notes that “the site is surrounded by numerous septic-to-sewer projects.” Surrounded!
The state’s spending $76 million trying to rid Wakulla of polluting septic tanks, according to the Northwest Florida Water Management District. So far it’s gotten rid of more than 1,009 of them.
Yet even as the state is moving Wakulla forward by spending lots of our money, Wakulla’s commissioners are taking the county backwards.