Awesome Florida Environmentalist Maggy Hurchalla dies at 81

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The most public environmental fight began in 2013 when Lake Point Restoration, a company with a limestone mining operation in Martin County, sued for contract interference. He had sent emails urging county commissioners to withdraw from a deal with Lake Point that he feared would destroy wetlands and cause further damage.

In court, Ms. Hurchalla argued that she was exercising her First Amendment rights. But Lake Point said it improperly instructed commissioners and made false claims that cost the company money. Lake Point offered to drop the case if it publicly apologized. She refused.

In 2018, a jury ruled against Ms. Hurchalla, finding that she should pay Lake Point $4.4 million in damages. He had no money. Sheriff’s deputies confiscated two canoes and a 2004 Toyota Camry that formerly belonged to his sister, before Lake Point gave them back. Last year, the US Supreme Court rejected Ms. Hurchalla’s request to hear her appeal in the case.

“I’m not at all sorry that I’ve spent the last seven years fighting for the First Amendment,” he said in an email to The New York Times following the supreme court’s decision. “By the way, I’m going skiing and I’ll keep saying what I think.”

Margaret Sloan Reno grew up on the edge of the Everglades, the third of four children, on a rural farm in Miami-Dade County with peacocks, raccoons, and donkeys in her backyard. The Miami Herald paid to connect the property to a hotline so that his father, Henry Olaf Reno, a police reporter, could call the police departments every morning to get a news.

His wife, Jane Wood Reno, a feature writer for rival Miami News, was tickled when she beat him up in a story. Ms. Wood Reno, a naturalist, built most of the farm by hand, although she has no construction background.

Maggy studied psychology at Swarthmore College and met Jim Hurchalla, an engineer. In 1968 they moved to Stuart’s Rocky Point neighborhood and built a house on a $5,000 plot on the banks of the Indian River.

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