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NY Times, Sept. 9, 2019
The Florida Activist Is 78. The Legal Judgment Against Her Is $4 Million.
By Patricia Mazzei
STUART, Fla. — Maggy Hurchalla’s piece of Florida heaven is a patch of
pristine Atlantic shore accessible only by boat in St. Lucie Inlet
Preserve State Park. She and her husband nicknamed it the “End of the
World” when they first came upon it half a century ago, after paddling
south along the barrier island to the water’s end. She still likes to
skinny-dip at the beach.
Ms. Hurchalla, 78, could spend her remaining years kayaking here,
readily outpacing paddlers less than half her age. Or traveling the
country, giving speeches about the legacy of her sister, Janet Reno, the
first female attorney general of the United States.
But instead of reveling in her retirement, Ms. Hurchalla, who has
devoted her life to protecting the untamed Florida wilderness that she
loved, has been fighting a public battle with a rock-mining company —
and losing.
A jury decided last year that Ms. Hurchalla should pay $4.4 million in
damages to Lake Point Restoration, a company that has a limestone mining
operation in Martin County, along Florida’s Treasure Coast.
Lake Point sued her for interfering with a contract after she emailed
Martin County commissioners, urging them to back out of a water deal
with the company that had initially been approved as a public-private
partnership that could keep polluted water out of a nearby estuary. Ms.
Hurchalla argued that she had merely exercised her First Amendment rights.
The legal saga involved secret emails, the ownership of Florida’s fresh
water, and the constitutional rights to free speech and to petition the
government.
Three months ago, a state appeals court upheld the verdict, alarming
environmental and free speech organizations that had implored the
three-judge panel to consider how profoundly such a precedent could
chill citizens’ ability to question their leaders.
Ms. Hurchalla appealed again, this time asking for a hearing before the
full Fourth District Court of Appeal. On Friday, the court denied her
request. She could still petition the Florida Supreme Court to consider
her case.
She does not have the money to pay the judgment. But Ms. Hurchalla does
not worry about that.
“What I worry about now,” she said, “is dying before we win.”
She is one of the few remaining voices of a generation that remembers
hurricanes before they had names, the last surviving child of a mother
who built the family homestead by hand. Her life has spanned much of the
state’s modern history, a story of growth inextricable from development.
The sale of 650 acres on the southern tip of Hutchinson Island in 1972
first spurred Ms. Hurchalla into activism. She wanted the land protected
for conservation. Instead, a developer bought it and built a gated
residential community. Ms. Hurchalla became Martin County’s first female
commissioner in 1974, a liberal Democrat in a town of Republicans.
The commission adopted strict protections for wetlands and a four-story
height limit for buildings. Growth happened anyway, but slowly and
“sanely,” Ms. Hurchalla said, keeping the county green and preserving an
Old Florida way of life.
In 1994, she lost re-election to an opponent largely bankrolled by
developers. Ms. Hurchalla returned to activism. Even now, she says, “I
spend too much time at the computer, trying to save the world.”
That is how she got in trouble with Lake Point, which in 2008 bought
2,200 acres of former sugar cane fields in the western fringes of Martin
County, near Lake Okeechobee.
Behind Lake Point was George Lindemann Jr., a billionaire real estate
investor and heir to a cellphone and cable TV fortune. He served prison
time after being convicted in 1995 of paying a man $25,000 to
electrocute his horse so Mr. Lindemann could collect a $250,000
insurance payout.
Mr. Lindemann’s consortium wanted to mine for limestone and use the
leftover pits to store lake water and clean its pollution, which would
otherwise be flushed down the fragile St. Lucie Estuary, contributing to
toxic algae blooms. The South Florida Water Management District and
Martin County signed off on the project.
But a few years later, Lake Point partnered with another company to try
to sell the water to the city of West Palm Beach, troubling Ms.
Hurchalla and Martin County officials, who questioned whether the
revised plan would really result in environmental benefits. (West Palm
Beach ultimately did not buy Lake Point’s water.)
Ms. Hurchalla fired off emails to county commissioners encouraging them
to get out of the agreement with Lake Point, arguing that it would
destroy wetlands and noting that no peer-reviewed study had examined the
effects on restoration plans for the downstream Florida Everglades,
which are supposed to get water from Lake Okeechobee, near the mine site.
She sent some of the emails to commissioners’ private email addresses.
She signed one of them “Deep Rock Pit” — a joke, she said later,
alluding to Deep Throat, the secret Washington Post source during the
Watergate scandal.
County staff members issued notices of violation against Lake Point.
In 2013, Lake Point sued the county, the water management district and
Ms. Hurchalla, claiming she waged an unlawful campaign against the
company that cost it its plans to make money off its cleaned lake water.
The court agreed: The litigation found that commissioners conducted
public business using their private email and delayed production of
those emails — or destroyed them altogether — in violation of public
records laws. Three commissioners were charged in criminal court. A jury
acquitted one of them in April, and the state attorney dropped the
charges against the other two last month.
The county and water management district settled with Lake Point for
millions of dollars, and the mine continues to operate. But Ms.
Hurchalla fought on, even after Lake Point offered to drop the case if
she publicly apologized.
Kayaks outside of Ms. Hurchalla’s home. Sheriff’s deputies seized two
kayaks and a Toyota Camry when a jury decided last year that Ms.
Hurchalla should pay $4.4 million in damages.CreditEve Edelheit for The
New York Times
She had nothing apologize for, she said: She had engaged her elected
leaders. But Lake Point accused her of improperly instructing
commissioners through the private emails — and of falsely claiming that
the wetlands would be harmed (they were not, the company said) and that
no scientific studies had been done (a preliminary review had been
conducted). That amounted to malice, the court ruled.
“The First Amendment’s very important, but it has its limits,” said
Ethan J. Loeb, the lead lawyer for Lake Point. “You’re not allowed to
tell falsehoods. You’re not allowed to lie. That’s not anything that’s
new or exotic. And if, in fact, you do not tell the truth, and those
falsehoods were designed to injure or harm a business, there’s a
consequence for that.”
Any wages Ms. Hurchalla makes are subject to garnishment. One of her
husband Jim’s retirement accounts was taken over. After the jury ruled
against her last year, sheriff’s deputies seized what they could of Ms.
Hurchalla’s property: two kayaks and a 2004 Toyota Camry — with a faded
“Defend Maggy” bumper sticker — that had been owned by her sister.
Lake Point later returned the kayaks and the car. But first, Ms.
Hurchalla’s neighbors dropped off other kayaks at her home in solidarity.
“Thank you for standing up for our First Amendment rights,” read a
handwritten note they left behind.
Richard Grosso, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University who
filed amicus briefs on behalf of advocacy groups as part of Ms.
Hurchalla’s appeal, said he had already heard from other activists who
feared that the ruling might hamper their ability to criticize the
government.
“I’ve had several clients contact me with deep concern about whether and
what they can say about environmental issues,” he said. “Florida is
battling global warming and sea-level rise and the loss of biodiversity,
so we cannot afford to be quiet.”
Ms. Hurchalla, as is her style, put it more bluntly: “I don’t think
anybody could safely stand at a podium in the state of Florida.”
One evening in July, Ms. Hurchalla, barefoot, with a knife cut on her
finger bandaged with duct tape, contemplated the recent events from the
screened porch of the home she and Jim built in 1968 after buying a
$5,000 lot on the banks of the Indian River. They raised four children
there. Two adult grandchildren live nearby.
Her breast cancer is in remission, but she has suffered since 1992 from
an autoimmune disorder that requires monthly intravenous transfusions of
antibodies.
“I did not expect to be alive at 78,” said Ms. Hurchalla, whose sister
died of complications from Parkinson’s disease at 78.
But Ms. Hurchalla did not dwell on what was to come. Instead, she looked
around in wonder. Past the mangroves, mullet jumped in the river.
“Look at what the world has done for me,” she said.
She served crackers and smoked fish dip from barracuda that Jim had
caught the night before. Then she planned the next day’s paddle,
checking on the high tide.
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