As battle lines form, St. Joe stays mum on offshore drilling debate

At the center of one movement is David Rauschkolb, a die-hard-surfer-turned-successful-restaurateur and the driving force behind the statewide Hands Across the Sand protest. Another is Northwest Florida attorney Billy Buzzett, who is about to launch an anti-drilling ballot initiative.

Chambers of Commerce and county commissions from Pensacola to Destin have passed anti-drilling resolutions. Yet to weigh in, however, is St. Joe Co., the second-largest private landowner in the state.

In the middle of transforming more than 500,000 acres into beachfront villas and vacation homes, the St. Joe Co. has been conspicuously absent in the debate.

Company officials referred all questions to a spokesman who did not return repeated phone calls.

"I haven't heard anything from the company, but for as long as I've known St. Joe, they've always played things pretty close to the vest," Rauschkolb said.

Call for support

Through frequent interviews, passionate discussions with his customers at Bud and Alley's, a Seaside landmark, and through his Web site, www.handsacrossthesand.com, Rauschkolb is urging drilling opponents to hit the beach on Feb. 13, weeks before the start of the next legislative session.

"If we could get hundreds of thousands of people to go to the beach, we could get the people in Tallahassee to listen," he said. "I'm in the Gulf every day, I taste the water. It's something I'm very passionate about. I'm also a businessman."

Buzzett is no stranger to legislative politics or the Florida Constitution he wants to amend. He's a former executive director of the Constitution Revision Commission and a former St. Joe vice president.

Buzzett left St. Joe on July 31 after the company went through a massive downsizing. He said he has severed all professional ties to the company and is only speaking for himself.

I'm very strongly against it," Buzzett said of offshore drilling. "I really think it's a bad idea. This is a good way to have a debate and let the voters decide."

Buzzett is working with veteran Tallahassee environmental activist Manley Fuller, president of the Florida Wildlife Federation. The two are shopping the proposal to sympathetic lawmakers in hopes that someone will file a joint resolution, the fastest route to the November ballot.

But they are willing to begin gathering the more than 676,000 signatures they would otherwise need to reach the ballot. There would be little hope, however, of collecting the needed number of signatures before a Feb. 1 deadline for reaching the 2010 ballot.

Either way, Buzzett said, the measure would be a good way to test recent polls that show a majority of Floridians support offshore drilling in Florida.

Drilling proponents insist the risk of a spill is negligible because of new technology. They also say that once the wells are in production, all operations would be submerged, with no rigs to mar the horizon nor interfere with the thousands of training flights that stream from the Panhandle's seven Air Force and Navy training bases every year.

Not gambling

Combined, the military bases account for 70,000 jobs and a $15 billion economic impact. With no drilling legislation yet available for review, local business leaders say they aren't willing to gamble.

"For us, it was an easy vote," said Dawn Moliterno, president and chief executive officer of the Walton Area Chamber of Commerce. "We just don't believe there is enough information to put our primary industries at risk."

St. Joe has been just as cautious about staking out a position.

St. Joe executive Stephen Hilliard sits on the board of the Walton Area Chamber of Commerce, but he joined the board after it approved its anti-drilling resolution. He declined to be interviewed.

Another St. Joe executive, Jerry Ray, is a board member of The Great Northwest, a Panhandle business-development group. He was absent when the group passed a resolution that opposes any offshore drilling in the military exclusion zones in Northwest Florida.

No pull from St. Joe

St. Joe's third-quarter standard financial filing — released Nov. 3 — briefly warns investors about the "possible negative effects from oil or natural gas drilling, if allowed off of the coast of Northwest Florida."

Sen. Mike Haridopolos, a Merritt Island Republican who is next in line to be Senate president, and the prime sponsor of drilling legislation in his chamber, said he has had no communication from St. Joe about the issue. Even if St. Joe came out against drilling, it wouldn't matter, Haridopolos said. Senate President Jeff Atwater has already outlined a lengthy process of fact finding and public hearings before any bills will be heard.

"I'm sure they'll give us their take on it," Haridopolos said. "Right now, we're taking it out of the political arena and just looking for the facts. No one company, no one individual, is going to take precedence over the facts."