🚨 Okaloosa County is fighting a CO₂ injection project planned just across the Alabama line.
💧 Officials warn the plan threatens the Floridan Aquifer and local rivers that supply drinking water.
⚖️ Commissioners vowed to pursue every legal and political avenue to stop the proposal.
CRESTVIEW — Okaloosa County officials are mounting an aggressive regional campaign to stop a proposed carbon-dioxide storage project planned just north of the Florida line, warning that the plan to inject hundreds of millions of tons of industrial CO₂ underground could endanger the Floridan Aquifer — the primary drinking-water source for much of Florida and the Southeast.
The proposal, advanced by an Alabama-based company with leases on roughly 74,000 acres, would transport liquefied CO₂ through a 200-mile pipeline from industrial sites in Alabama before injecting it about 3,000 feet underground near the Florida border.
On Tuesday, the Okaloosa County Board of County Commissioners unanimously voted to oppose the project and pursue every available legal, political and administrative avenue to halt it.
Deputy County Administrator Craig Coffey told commissioners the project poses “a host of cascading events,” including risks of groundwater contamination and even seismic activity.
Coffey explained that the aquifer beneath the proposed injection zone feeds the Yellow, Shoal and Choctawhatchee rivers, which in turn supply drinking water to Okaloosa County and support critical estuary systems along the Emerald Coast.
“You’re taking industrial air emissions from north Alabama and converting them into ground emissions here,” Coffey said. “And once underground contamination begins, you may not detect it for years — not until people start getting sick or their wells begin showing impacts.”
Commissioners expressed alarm that the proposal originated in Alabama communities farther north but was relocated closer to Florida after earlier opposition succeeded.
Board Chairman Paul Mixon, whose district borders the affected region, said the potential contamination zone covers a vast swath of northeastern Okaloosa County.
“My suggestion is that we take extremely strong opposition to this and make it known publicly — not just in Florida, but in Washington, where the permits are decided,” he said.
Commissioner Trey Goodwin compared the project to a neighboring state exporting its pollution across the line.
“It’s basically a dump,” Goodwin said. “It’s like saying, ‘I’ve got garbage in my yard, so I’ll put it in my neighbor’s yard.’ We need to pull out our full arsenal to fight this.”
Goodwin urged the county to engage federal lobbyists, coordinate with state officials, and authorize the county attorney to intervene directly in the permitting process — including potential litigation — at both the state and federal levels.
Commissioner Sherri Cox, who previously worked with hazardous industrial chemicals, said the threat is personal.
“It blows my mind that they want to store this less than 100 miles from the Gulf,” she said. “Forever chemicals, hexavalent chromium — I’ve seen what contaminants can do. I will fight this with everything I have.”
Commissioner Carolyn Ketchel said the proposal threatens one of Florida’s most valuable assets.
“Our aquifer is the envy of everybody, and everybody wants that water,” Ketchel said. “If we had been asleep at the wheel, they might have gotten away with it. We need to open fire on this.”
Commissioner Drew Palmer added that communities farther north in Alabama had already defeated similar proposals — only for the project to be moved south.
“It shows there’s precedent for fighting this,” Palmer said. “Water does not obey state boundaries.”
Though the proposed project would physically sit in south Alabama, Okaloosa County officials say the consequences — in a worst-case scenario — would be felt most acutely in Florida.
The Floridan Aquifer, one of the most productive on Earth, supplies drinking water to millions across multiple states. Expert analyses, including those cited by the Sustainability Directory, warn that carbon-storage wells can leak through cracks, fissures, or borehole failures, allowing CO₂ — or contaminated fluids displaced by it — to migrate into freshwater systems.
“You cannot inspect a cavern a mile underground the same way you can inspect a water tank,” Coffey said during the meeting. “Once it’s injected, there is no undo button.”
Okaloosa’s stance gained reinforcement weeks earlier in Walton County, where Alabama Rep. Matthew Hammett (R-92nd District) addressed the Walton County Commission about the same project. Hammett warned that Reliant — the company behind the pipeline and injection wells — intends to bury up to 500 million cubic tons of CO₂ annually.
“One of the storage sites is within two miles of Paxton,” Hammett said, calling on Florida officials to pressure members of Congress and to oppose the granting of federal permits.
Hammett has also filed Alabama House Bill 64, a measure that would ban CO₂ disposal wells statewide. The Alabama Legislature reconvenes in January 2026.
A Walton County resident told commissioners the contamination risk cannot be overstated. “It will go into our aquifer — and into our bodies,” she said. “We already struggle with water quality. We don’t want this.”
The company behind the proposal must still obtain approvals from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Alabama Oil and Gas Board — processes that could take months or years and may involve formal objections and evidentiary hearings.
Okaloosa County commissioners say they intend to be involved at every stage.
“This is a threat to the health of our people and our environment,” Mixon said. “We will oppose it with everything we have.”
Pro Communi Bono
St. Francis De Sales, Ora Pro Nobis!
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