Florida’s water levels, rare plants and ancient fish are among the natural resources that could be protected by a proposed expansion to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
The refuge is within the Okefenokee Swamp: a blackwater bog almost half the size of Rhode Island that feeds the Suwannee and St. Marys Rivers.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed expansion, announced earlier this month, would extend the refuge’s borders by 22,000 acres. The deadline for public comment is Dec. 9.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service labels the proposed expansion as “minor” because it increases the size of the 400,000-acre refuge by less than 15%. The irregular, widespread plots it includes, however, are particularly environmentally and economically important.
The mineral-rich, forested land encircling the refuge is currently split between a dozen or so private owners. While the expansion wouldn’t require landowners to sell, it would make it easier for them to do so.
Advocates say the expansion is a first step toward protecting the refuge from encroaching development. The swamp is a biodiversity hotspot, they say, a foundation for riverine ecosystems spanning the state.
Some landowners — most with mineral or timber operations in the area — hold tight to their property rights, saying their industries are sustainable and bring jobs to one of the poorest regions of Georgia.
A mineral and culture-rich site
Mining companies have long eyed Trail Ridge for its heavy minerals, raw materials commonly used in electronics manufacturing.
The ridge, 100 miles long and 230 feet high, is the “edge of the bathtub” for the Okefenokee Swamp, said Marie Lathers, author of “The Okefenokee Swamp: A natural and cultural history.”
It was a travel route for Native Americans, with particular ancestral importance to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, who lived in the swamp area for a century. “There’s a cultural reason not to disturb it,” she said, “and there’s also a very serious ecological reason not to disturb that ridge. We just don’t know how it might change the delicate balance of the water.”
That hasn’t stopped the mining industry from trying.
In 1997, DuPont proposed a 38,000-acre titanium strip mine on a segment of Trail Ridge southeast of the swamp’s border. The company withdrew the proposal in 1999 after a public outcry.
In 2020, Twin Pines Minerals submitted a similar proposal to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division. It hasn’t yet been approved.
Water level impacts
The proposed expansion includes part of Twin Pines’ land. While it wouldn’t interfere with the mine’s permitting process or eventual operations, it would give miners (and their neighbors) the option to sell.
That’s important, advocates say, for keeping the Okefenokee “bathtub” filled.
When miners dig into sand deposits, water from the surficial aquifer pours in. To collect minerals, the crew must pump this water out and into storage ponds, where it will evaporate. Twin Pines estimates it will withdraw 1.13 million gallons of water per day from this surficial aquifer, plus another 1.44 million gallons from the deeper Floridan Aquifer.
That drop in water levels is “of obvious importance to Florida,” said Eugene Kelly, President of the Florida Native Plant Society. “The water doesn’t recognize the state line when it crosses it.”
“Envision a straw dipped down through the earth into the aquifer,” Kelly said. Water levels are lowest at the straw’s mouth and gradually rise, radiating outward. The mine’s withdrawals, he said “would be analogous to what’s seen sometimes on wellfields.”
Kelly pointed to the example of Starkey Wellfield in Pasco County, where in the 1990s, overpumping drained lakes and wetlands around the wellheads. “Cypress trees died and the peaty soils of that wetland dried up,” causing upland plant species to move in, he said.
Plant impacts
Around 85% of the Okefenokee Swamp sits within the Suwannee River Basin, a system whose groundwater already suffers from overpumping. Increased withdrawals — whether from the proposed mine or other industries around the swamp — could lower river levels.
That would set off a long line of ecological dominos.
The wet pine flatwoods and other habitats that line the Suwannee are home to some of Florida’s rarest plants. Southern milkweed, its white-pink flower clusters interspersed with jade-green leaves, is on the state’s threatened species list. The four-foot stems and yellow petal crowns of the Purple honeycomb-head are endangered, too.
“A small change in the hydrology of the pine flatwoods basically changes the habitat to such a degree that a species like the Many-flowered Grass Pink would vanish,” Kelly said.
“If we’re not going to protect the Okefenokee,” said John S. Quarterman, Suwannee Riverkeeper, “what are we going to protect?”
Fish impacts
Ecosystem impacts are a concern in the St. Marys River, too.
Much of the river’s water comes from the Okefenokee Swamp and tributaries east of Trail Ridge. Water input into the St. Marys River from both the swamp and Trail Ridge would drop because of mining.
The resulting lower flow, explained St. Marys Riverkeeper Emily Floore, could harm ancient, endangered fish.
The St. Marys River is designated a critical habitat for Atlantic Sturgeon. The species was considered locally extinct until researchers found something unlikely in 2014: a 1-year-old sturgeon.
A study of the river’s sturgeon population is ongoing, but early data suggest spawning grounds could be roughly 100 miles upriver, near the swamp. The river already suffers from periodic droughts, dropping water levels to 1 or 2 feet.
“When you have low water for such a long period of time, it heats up faster, which means that you have less dissolved oxygen, so now you have water quality issues,” Floore said. Increased groundwater withdrawals could compound the effect.
“If the sturgeon can’t get to their spawning grounds when they’re supposed to because the water’s too low, what’s the impact?”
Economic impacts
The expansion would allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to start conversations with landowners about acquisition or easements. The money to purchase the land could come from a variety of sources, wrote a representative of FWS to WUFT, including the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund.
Selling to the FWS is voluntary and, to some Okefenokee-area landowners, not an economically compelling option.
Earlier this month, Twin Pines Minerals President Steve Ingle said in a statement, “Our plans to commence mining upon permit approval are unchanged.”
Even if Twin Pines doesn’t sell, said Quarterman, the Suwannee Riverkeeper, others might. Other areas of Trail Ridge are equally minerally rich, he explained, and could be targeted for future mining.
Landowners within the proposed expansion, “might decide, ‘let’s sell it and get a tax write-off’,” he said. “It’s certainly conceivable.”
Conceivable, but not compelling.
Joe Hopkins is President of Toledo Manufacturing Company, a timber business whose large main forest tract borders the Okefenokee Swamp. Hopkins estimated he owns 10,000 to 12,000 acres within the refuge’s acquisition border, a third of which are within the swamp itself, “which from our standpoint, an economic standpoint, is useless,” he said.
He sees an irony in conservation buyers who call the swamp “priceless” yet offer only a few hundred dollars an acre to acquire it.
“Every time [government buyers] approached me with numbers, like $200 an acre, I look at them again and say ‘now, wait a second, remember what I’m selling to you is priceless,” Hopkins said. “You’re fixin’ to put a price on the Okefenokee Swamp.”
Hopkins pays about $4 to $5 an acre in tax, a contribution to the region’s tax base he says would be lost with government acquisition. “We’re an extremely low socioeconomic county,” he said of his home (and part of the swamp’s) in Charlton County.
“We [Folkston, Charlton County] just lost two more businesses in the last three months,” he said. “We’re just sitting here, dying on the vine, and all everybody can do is fight over the swamp.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
