The Dan A. Hughes Company, an independent oil and gas exploration company headquartered in Beeville, Texas, apparently owns the mineral rights to an onshore oil reserve known as the Sunniland Trend, which stretches from Ft. Myers to Miami. And they fully intend on fracking the crap out of it.

According to the Green Party of Florida, the company has been going under the radar for months, getting permits and permission to start drilling and frack a 13,900-feet deep exploratory well in the Florida Everglades.

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Environmental activists across Florida have been waiting more than two years for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to land a serious body blow against the state's enforcement branch. The question was whether Herschel Vinyard's place at the top of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection was a violation the Clean Water Act due to his past employment. Now, the federal agency has finally answered the complaint, and the response isn't exactly what Florida's green crowd was hoping for.

See also:
- DEP Secretary Herschel Vinyard Says He Didn't Lie on Résumé; PEER Not Buying It
- EPA Wants to Know if Herschel Vinyard, Secretary of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, Lied on His Resume

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Florida got the Earth Day festivities kicked off early with some good old-fashioned litigation.

Over the weekend, Florida joined Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana in suing BP and Halliburton over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The suit, filed by State Attorney General Pam Bondi in U.S. District Court in Panama City, gets after BP for not changing the batteries on the oil rig's blowout preventer and points the proverbial finger at Halliburton for installing faulty cement barriers.

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Tolomea via Flickr

"Pink slip Rick!"

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Environmentalists say the sand dune was a habitat for sea turtles like the one above

The Mayan Beach Club has obliterated a 176-foot-long sand dune on Fort Lauderdale's beach that helped prevent beach erosion and provided a nesting place for endangered green sea turtles, because the it blocked the view of the ocean.

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection apparently made the beach club prove that the removal of the dune wouldn't cause beach erosion and wouldn't be detrimental to the area's protected vegetation, nesting turtles, or their baby turtles.

According to the condo's attorney, Mitchell Burnstein, their final analysis -- done by coastal engineers -- found the dune to be too isolated to stop storm surges or beach erosion.

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Sad news today for South Florida environmentalists, sea turtles, and Mother Earth: After a circuitous and arguably shady legal battle, Fort Lauderdale's Mayan Beach Sand Dune was plowed over at some point in the past 48 hours.

Even though an August court decision sealed the dune's fate, the destruction blindsided supporters. Richard WhiteCloud, head of the Sea Turtle Oversight Protection Program, says his group had scouts watching the beach for heavy equipment that might signal the end was nigh.

But without any warning WhiteCloud got a call yesterday from a staff member that the dune had been 86'd.





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In three days, more than 480 people have signed a petition to save the Mayan Beach Sand Dune in Fort Lauderdale from destruction.

Spearheaded by the Sea Turtle Oversight Protection, the petition is the latest development in a battle between developers and environmentalists that has stretched for more than a year.

"Private property owners want to demolish the dune because the view of the ocean is slightly obstructed by it," Richard WhiteCloud, founding director of STOP, tells New Times. The dune provides crucial protection for sea turtle nests and helps beat back floodwaters. "The storm we just had is a fresh reminder of what dune systems do, especially considering we had three feet of water on parts of A1A."

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