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Levy County: from Nature Coast to Nuclear Coast

It's not the planned nuclear plant that has people in Levy County worried. It's the growth that comes with it.

By Asjylyn Loder, Times Staff Writer
Published December 9, 2007

Motels, restaurants and businesses are sparsely located south of Chiefland on Highway 19 down to the Levy County line. Photo gallery
	[Keri Wiginton | Times]

INGLIS - One stoplight hangs like a punch line 5 miles north of Red Level, waiting for the joke about one-stoplight towns. After the miles of neon and strip malls strung along U.S. 19, it marks the start of a long, green break. - The harbingers of what's coming hide behind the scrim of trees. Surveyors parcel out the old timberland. Contractors measure and plot the extension of the Suncoast Parkway. There's a new mine in the works near Inglis, a new hospital planned up in Chiefland. - Hidden in 3,100 acres of all that passing green, Progress Energy has marked the outlines of its planned nuclear power plant, a project that could cost more than $10-billion.

On the rivers and in the tiny town halls, in real estate offices and on the clam leases in the gulf, a familiar Florida conversation unfolds: "I don't want to see it destroyed." "Levy County is in the bull's eye now." "It's inevitable. You can't fight it." "We'll have to get a piece of the pie."

"It's waiting. All this land."

The people here see growth coming. How they see it is another thing. A promise of relief from poor prospects, spare-shelved stores and dusty roads. Or another assault, after escaping places like New Port Richey, Long Island and Key West.

Shaping the debate into "sides" obscures the layered reality, and ignores the overlapping rights and claims. In mapping out the future of this quiet coastal county, everyone knows what happened down state and up East. After all the paving and parceling, amid rising insurance rates and falling home values, in the face of failing fisheries and thriving hydrilla, what's to become of what's left?

Levy County slumbered through the development that hurtled north up U.S. 19, lapping the county's southern edge. The receding real estate market left behind 40,000 people, just 5,000 more than lived here in 2000.

At the same time, new residents flooded their southern neighbors. Citrus County gained more than 20,000 people. Hernando added nearly 35,000. Pasco packed in more than 105,000.

Then, in late 2006, Levy County shuddered awake. In October, local officials discovered that the Suncoast Parkway extension to the Levy-Citrus border was edging toward approval. Two months later, Progress Energy picked Levy County for a $3.5-billion nuclear power plant.

"For sale" signs sprouted by the timberland along U.S. 19, and on the family farms along the back roads.

"In 10 or 15 years, you won't recognize this place," said Doug King, a real estate agent in Chiefland, 40 miles north of the Citrus County line.

Chiefland has a new shopping center on the boardand a hospital slated to break ground in 2008. Townhouse developers want a piece of the market that will one day work at the nuclear plant. The state recently named Levy County an "enterprise zone," making businesses eligible for tax incentives. Although Progress Energy hasn't made a final decision to build, the utility spent nearly $47-million for 3,100-acres east of U.S. 19, north of Inglis.

King, a self-described conservationist, said growth is inevitable. It just has to be controlled.

"I saw them fight growth in Pasco County when I was young," he remembered. "They thought they could stop it. They couldn't stop it, and it came over them like a wave."

- - -

Carolyn Risher, mayor of Inglis, can hardly wait for that wave. Eccentric and plain-spoken, Risher has ruled over this town of 1,700 town for 14 years. Six years ago, she famously issued a proclamation banning Satan from the city limits.

Risher makes it clear that all but a few troublemakers favor the nuclear plant. She's already counting the money, and what it can do for her town: Pave roads. Fill the restaurants. Maybe attract a grocery store. Give people good-paying jobs in a county where the median income falls $11,000 short of the state median of $40,900.

Progress Energy initially estimated that the plant would cost $3.5-billion. However, the utility might build two reactors, and costs could run much higher. Without a firm cost estimate, it's unclear how much the utility will pay in taxes. Progress Energy estimates that the plant will have a $140-million effect on the local economy every year, and generate nearly $40-million in wages.

For Risher, 67, that's a return to glory days, when most of the town worked at the now-shuttered Florida Power plant.

The best measure of what it will do for Levy County stands about 10 miles south: Progress Energy's Crystal River complex, the second-largest generator of electricity in the nation. The St. Petersburg utility pays nearly $30-million in taxes to Citrus County every year, said utility spokeswoman Cherie Jacobs. It employs 1,100 people in Citrus County, most of them at Crystal River.

- - -

There's a local history written about Levy County's namesake, David Levy Yulee. It opens with this question: "As a railroad builder, was he a scheming, grasping developer, or an honest, visionary entrepreneur?"

The answer depends on how you decode history. Levy cut a figure that would be familiar in today's political landscape: son of a wealthy businessman, he became a lawyer and later a politician. He combined a nose for business with a flair for persuasion, promising jobs and prosperity as he used his influence to bring the railroad to Cedar Key in 1861.

Twenty-five years after the first rail car pulled in, turpentine distilleries employed hundreds of men. Commercial fishing boats vied for space on the docks. Cedar Key had 17 sawmills turning out nearly half a million board feet of lumber every week.

"We're told the islands had a totally different look in those days," Capt. Doug Maple told a handful of tourists one recent evening. He steered his half-full pontoon boat between the keys, pointing out a pair of dolphins, a school of mullet riffling the surface of the water and Galapagos frigate birds, with their famous red chests furled for the night.

By the 1880s, Cedar Key's industry had begun a swift decline, Maple recounted. They had overfished the fisheries, over-gathered the turtles, and overharvested the trees.

What isn't there counts as the lasting monument to industry: towering centuries-old cypress and vast stands of southern red cedar, hacked down and milled into pencils.

- - -

Maple's cautionary tale remains the story Cedar Key tells about itself, a warning they keep well in view.

People still need near-constant reminding, said Sue Colson, Cedar Key clam farmer and councilwoman. A native of Long Island, she saw New York's fishing villages overrun. She used to harvest oysters in the Suwannee River basin until regulators shut her down when water quality declined. Now, she and her husband harvest clams in underwater leases off Cedar Key.

"As a lay person whose livelihood is so directly tied to water quality, we're the barometer of what's happening," Colson said.

Cedar Key has taken extraordinary measures to protect its shore. The city limited density and enacted strict requirements for new septic systems. Storm drains capture rainwater, allowing oil and litter to separate out before releasing the run-off to the gulf.

But their inland neighbors aren't as careful. Homeowners spray their lawns with fertilizer and pesticides. Short of cash, some wait longer than they should to repair aging septic tanks. Millions of gallons of water will flow from the cooling towers of Progress Energy's new power plant. It all finds its way to the gulf.

Now the nuclear plant promises more than 4,000 jobs tied to building the plant, and nearly 2,000 permanent jobs between the plant and the support industries around it. Those people have to live somewhere, Colson worried. Will they respect the families downstream?

"The clam farmer could close down tomorrow if the water goes bad. He's done. He can't work," Colson said. "The nuclear plant guy will work every day."

Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or 813 225-3117.

What They're Saying

"It's just a matter of time. It's going to follow the same pattern. It's a rural county, low-income. Then you get this golden goose on the coast, promising jobs and money coming into the tax base, and before you know it, it's ruined. It's happened all up and down the Florida coast, on both sides."

- Doug Maple, 58, retired Georgia police officer, Cedar Key tour boat captain, member of the county Tourist Development Council

"That little town drew people because it was unchanged, laid back. And now, the richies are in there building all these big condos. I understand you can't stop progress, but it's a shame to see a little town go up into the rich man's hands. And that's what it's going to be."

- Lindon Lindsey, 81, local historian born and raised in Cedar Key, now lives in Chiefland

"I make my living as a real estate broker but I'm a conservationist. When I'm hunting or fishing, I want to keep this for my children and grand-children. I also have my heart here, and I want to see this done the right way."

- Doug King, 59, a Chiefland Realtor and member of the Nature Coast Business Development Council

"My husband is a fifth-generation Floridian, and my grandchildren are seventh. I was raised in Long Island, when Seatauket and Stony Brook looked like this city. It can get destroyed quick. And you'll never see a vestige of what was there. Then I moved to South Florida and saw that get obliterated. I'm probably more of a zealot than the fifth generations are because I know - I know - it can be destroyed."

- Sue Colson, 61, Cedar Key councilwoman and clam farmer

About this story

A year ago, Progress Energy picked sleepy Levy County for its new nuclear plant. The final decision to build won't be made until next year, but the county is already changing. The Times visited Levy County to take stock of the early changes, and will revisit the county as plans for the power plant move forward.

View a slide show of life in Levy County at money.tampaby.com

[Last modified December 7, 2007, 21:59:50]