"Apalachicola and its neighboring towns stand apart from the rest of the beach towns along Florida’s panhandle because, for generations, residents have created a local identity and economy based on harvesting and fishing that timeless marine delicacy, the humble oyster. “I love this area. My family’s raised up on it,” Ricky Banks, a fourth-generation oysterman, told the senators. During the past two years, the oyster population here has gone into dramatic decline, plummeting last August to the point where they almost disappeared. The shellfish’s Apalachicola Bay home is the victim of a decades-long battle over water resources in the Southeast, dubbed “the tri-state water wars.” For years, Florida, Alabama and Georgia have been fighting over access to water in the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River basin, which flows from northeast Georgia down through Alabama and western Georgia and ultimately into Apalachicola Bay. Not long ago, the bay produced 90 percent of the oysters in Florida and 10 percent of the national supply. But Florida is losing the water wars, and the oystermen are losing their jobs and their livelihoods as a result."
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 12:36:10 +0000
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