State: Group seeks slow Panhandle growth

TALLAHASSEE -- A fledgling group of activists on Tuesday called for a one-year moratorium on all projects by the St. Joe Co. to allow for better land-use planning across the Panhandle.

The St. Joe Co., the state's largest landowner, is pursuing more than a dozen development projects across Northwest Florida. The company's plans would bring in thousands of new residents, as well as move roads, add expressways and put a major new airport next to a state forest north of Panama City.

St. Joe executives say they want to maintain the Panhandle's unique rural character while dramatically changing its population and geography. They even want to change the name -- they prefer "Florida's Great Northwest," not the Panhandle.

But a 2-month-old group, the Panhandle Citizens Coalition, contends that state and local officials have done a poor job of reviewing the cumulative effect of all of St. Joe's projects.

Coalition chairman John Hedrick, a Leon County public defender, sent a letter to Gov. Jeb Bush formally requesting that he order the state Department of Community Affairs to force "a pause for planning" in all St. Joe developments "for at least a year."

"The pause is justified and necessary to head off significant threats of overburdened public facilities and environmental and ecological damage," Hedrick wrote in his letter to Bush.

However, Community Affairs Secretary Steve Seibert said such a moratorium is legally impossible.

"We don't have the authority to do that, and the governor doesn't have the authority to do that," he said.

Hedrick said the yearlong moratorium would allow St. Joe time to put all its plans on the table at once, rather than revealing them piecemeal. But Seibert said asking St. Joe to unveil every bit of its plans for all of its holdings "is not realistic."

The coalition, which has about 40 members, was formed in July "out of frustration of trying to deal with St. Joe," said member Jack Rudloe, owner of a private marine laboratory in Panacea and the author of The Wilderness Coast and other books about the Panhandle's natural bounty.

"I've gone to meetings where they tell you they have one thing and then something changes," Rudloe said. "They have fancy pictures and graphics on what the development will be . . . but we don't get any answers when we ask about the impact of putting 500 houses on a fragile area."

In a prepared statement, St. Joe spokesman Jerry Ray did not respond directly to the moratorium request. Instead he said the company "has demonstrated its commitment to public input -- no matter its motivation -- with scores and scores of public meetings on all of our projects."

Although St. Joe executives persuaded the Legislature last year to loosen the rules on state oversight of major developments in the Panhandle's rural counties, the agency has attempted to provide some broad review of St. Joe's projects.

The agency has been working with Bay County to plan for the impact not only of the proposed airport, which would be larger than Tampa's, but also for St. Joe's development plans for the 70,000 acres the company owns around the proposed airport site.

And Seibert's agency provided scathing comments about St. Joe's proposed SummerCamp development near Apalachicola. "This type of development is not appropriate for the 784-acre Turkey Point parcel," a top DCA official wrote to Franklin County officials.

At DCA's prompting, Franklin County commissioners recently decided to overhaul their comprehensive plan for future growth, in the meantime putting on hold any rezoning to accommodate St. Joe's SummerCamp project.

Spearheading the battle against St. Joe in Franklin County has been a coalition of environmental groups that includes the Apalachee Ecological Conservancy, or Apeco; Apalachicola Bay and Riverkeepers; Florida Wildlife Federation; and 1,000 Friends of Florida.

Although activists with Apeco and the Riverkeeper organization said they were familiar with the Panhandle Citizens Coalition, they said the new group had not attempted to join their coalition or even discussed with them its planned call for a moratorium.

"I think they're biting off more than they can chew, but more power to them," said Lawton Langford, a Franklin County resident who has been in the thick of the fight.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk