The city of Apalachicola is assembling a package of water and sewer department audits for Attorney General James Uthmeier to review.
Uthmeier’s office enforces consumer protection laws. He wants to know how and why after residents paid for clean potable water, the city’s water department delivers water with such an extreme sulfurous odor that residents deride it as “egg water,” and say it is unfit for cooking or bathing.
Uthmeier said there’s been a “failure of leadership” to deliver and he will submit any findings of financial mismanagement to Florida’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. “We will use every tool we have to bring any civil or criminal remedy necessary to deliver for Floridians,” Uthmeier said in launching the investigation June 26.
Apalachicola interim city manager Chris Holley said an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement earlier this month asked for audits going back to 2022.
“We’re pulling together the information they would like to see,” Holley said.
Last September, Hurricane Helene knocked out the city’s scrubber, used to aerate and filter the water sent to homes and businesses. A replacement for the huge piece of machinery is being manufactured in Texas. The cost of the repair is about $450,000. Apalachicola’s water and sewer department has an annual budget of about $920,000.
Holley said the new scrubber is on schedule to be delivered and installed by Labor Day.
Helene plunged the small community into a crisis that is among the top fears of water managers across the nation.
A 2025 State of the Water Industry report by the American Water Works Association reports 59% of public water works professionals said their no. 1 concern is where to find the money to maintain aging water infrastructures.
Repairs to a damaged well have improved water quality since Uthmeier launched an investigation into how the Apalachicola water crisis began, however. After the crisis plunged visitor numbers in May and June, Holley said more than 10,000 people attended the city’s Fourth of July celebration and the town’s restaurants are “operating normally.”
But residents remain cautious in using tap water: “They did lift the boil water notice. However, I think many citizens, much like myself, still don’t trust it enough to drink it yet,” charter boat Captain T. J. Saunders said. And local resident Krystal Hernandez said after opting for showers in the summer rain or baths in the river for her children, the family bought a filtration system and have resumed bathing indoors..
While working with a damaged scrubber, one of the city’s three wells went off-line for repairs, forcing reliance on lower quality water. And that overwhelmed the city’s ability to filter hydrogen sulfate, a byproduct of the breakdown of organic material and source of the putrid egg smell.
By June, local businesses reported a double-digit decline in tourism-related sales. Saunders said his charter fishing business was down at least 20% and those who didn’t cancel had complaints.
A group of Chicago businessmen in town to fish tarpon preferred the public showers at St. Joseph State Park rather than bathe at their Apalachicola rental. He said they would bring their towels, soap and shampoo when they went out angling for tarpon and stop at the park at the end of the excursion.
“We were the butt of their jokes. They’d go, ‘How did it get this bad? Why did you let it get this bad?’ I had to listen to it for four days. It was embarrassing,” Saunders said.
Uthmeier’s spokesperson said any lawsuits that result from the investigation would be filed from a consumer protection perspective – that residents are not getting what they have paid for. Uthmeier also requested the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Health review water quality and health standards.
DEP referred questions to Uthmeier’s office. The Department of Health did not respond to requests for comment. An FDLE spokesperson said they could not comment.
“The most frustrating part of this whole process is the lack of quality information about what needs to be done and what is being done for us to get back to 100% good, clean healthy water,” Saunders said.
James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Apalachicola facing more legal heat over foul-smelling tap water
Reporting by James Call, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Tallahassee Democrat
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
