U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

DEP Secretary Herschel Vinyard Cleared of EPA Violations Thanks to Statute of Limitations

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 Protecti ... More >>

Is There Arsenic in Your Beer?

When you crack open a cold one, or have it served to you in a frosted glass, you're expecting to drink beer, right? But what about heavy metals? No we're not talking about Iron Maiden, but arsenic. Arsenic, people! A recent report claims that high levels of arsenic has been found in over 300 filte ... More >>

Are GMOs to Blame for Decline in Florida Honeybees?

A lot of people have an intense fear of bees. Whether you were stung as a child or just traumatized from young Macaulay Culkin's death in My Girl, the buzzing little insect has picked up a bad rep. And yet, the prolific pollinators are integral to our food supply. Without bees, most of the plants w ... More >>

DEP Proposes Allowing More Toxins in Water; Eating More Than Three Shrimp Per Week Dangerous, Critics Say

The environment hasn't been a high priority for legislators at any level since Al Gore was wearing earth tones, but what's happening in Florida under Rick Scott is downright scary. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is in serious fox-guarding-henhouse mode. Its current secretary ... More >>

I-4 Corridor Predicts Florida for Romney

Poisoned: Asthma, Cancer, and Death Prowl a Miami Neighborhood

Mike Woika, Assistant City Manager of Boca, Says City's Water is Perfectly Potable

Mike Woika sounded dismayed, perplexed, and just a tad angry as he worked his way through our post from last week about Boca Raton's water supply and a recent Notice of Violation handed down by the Palm Beach County Health Department.See also-Boca Raton Utility Order to "Immediately" Fix Water ... More >>

America's Fracking Gold Rush Portends the Greatest Environmental Disaster of a Generation

DEP Secretary Herschel Vinyard Says He Didn't Lie on Résumé; PEER Not Buying It

See also "EPA Wants to Know if DEP Secretary Herschel Vinyard Lied on His Résumé" and "PEER Blasts Herschel Vinyard for Trying to Water Down Pollution Permit Process" After nearly four months of waiting, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection finally responded to a ... More >>

DEP's Jeff Littlejohn Violating Federal Clean Water Act, Says PEER Complaint

Jeff Littlejohn, the No. 2 man at Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, is in violation of conflict-of-interest clauses contained within the federal Clean Water Act, according to a complaint filed with the Environmental Protection Agency.The complaint, submitted by Public Employees ... More >>

Littlejohn's Lobbying Firm Has More Family Ties With Department of Environmental Protection

See also "DEP Brass Jeff Littlejohn's Parents Own Lobbying Firm With Questionable Clientele" and "EPA Wants to Know if Herschel Vinyard Lied on His Resume"Earlier this week, we told you how Jeff Littlejohn, deputy secretary of regulatory programs at the Department of Environmental Protection, is the ... More >>

Florida Department of Environmental Protection Getting Weaker Under Rick Scott

Gov. Rick Scott appears on track to fulfill his vision of making the Florida Department of Environmental Protection a customer-service oriented rubber stamp that allows industry to dump on the environment with little worry.In 2011, there was a 28 percent drop in enforcement ... More >>

Three More Plead Guilty in Million-Dollar Toilet Paper Ripoff Scheme

A million-dollar scheme in Palm Beach involving bogus government toilet-paper regulation is slowly... unraveling.Three men pleaded guilty earlier this month to conspiracy charged linked to their involvement with FBK Products LLC, which sold a septic tank treatment they claimed helped break down "sec ... More >>

EPA Wants to Know if Herschel Vinyard, Secretary of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, Lied on his Resume

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is investigating whether Herschel Vinyard, secretary of Florida's Department of Environmental Protection, fabricated part of his resume and has asked Vinyard's counsel to clarify various discrepancies surrounding his employment history.It seems ... More >>

Free Market Florida, Mad at EPA Investigation Into Herschel Vinyard, Says EPA Should Investigate Itself

It didn't take long for the business community to come running to the defense of Herschel Vinyard.Free Market Florida, a self-described "unapologetic advocate for the principles of the free market," on Thursday issued a press release saying that the Environmental Protection Agency sho ... More >>

George LeMieux Camp Says Maybe Connie Mack's Water Bill Is So Low Because He Drinks Tiger Blood

While it's not clear if a Republican can beat Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November, the fight for the Republican nomination has no shortage of interesting rhetorical maneuverings.The most recent spat between George LeMieux and Rep. Connie Mack started over a web ad the LeMieux campaign released t ... More >>

Bill Koch and Oxbow Donate $1 Million to Romney Super PAC

​Six months ago, Bill Koch's spokesman told us the Palm Beach billionaire's political allegiances were "hard to pin down." Unlike Tea Party sugar daddies Charles and David Koch, "Wild Bill" was the Koch brother who supported more traditional Republican candidates and liked to fly under the radar. ... More >>

EPA Makes Toxic Releases In Broward Easier To Find Than Ever

​Copper in Coral Springs. Lead in Deerfield. Styrene in Dania Beach. These are just a few of the cases that turn up with a quick search of the Environmental Protection Agency's new Toxic Release Inventory database.The database, consisting of toxic disposals from 2010, allows users to search by zip ... More >>

Zombie Honeybees Found in California

​It may sound like some truly bad straight-to-DVD movie, but Scientific American is reporting the discovery of zombie honeybees in Northern California, which may provide a clue in the search behind colony collapse disorder.A research article recently published in Plos One, a peer-reviewed science ... More >>

Three Plead Guilty in Scam Based on Government-Regulated Toilet Paper

​Question: How much money can three Palm Beach County scam artists make by convincing old people there are new government regulations that ban traditional toilet paper?Answer: Around $1 million, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.Mary Moore, 54, Joseph Nouerand, 52, and Christopher Lincoln, 4 ... More >>

Gov. Scott Presents Plan for Everglades Restoration -- Meaning More Engineering

​The Everglades is too far gone for anyone to let it take its natural course. South Florida's entire inland economy depends on a water system that stays around the same level all year long, avoids flooding communities (cough, Weston, cough) that are stupidly built in the natural flow of water from ... More >>

Someone May Have Taken a Dump in Sunrise's Water Supply

hundredyearstorm.comThis is where poo-poo is supposed to go.​If your tap water has been tasting a little poopy lately, that's a problem.The Broward County Health Department sent out a drinking water warning yesterday, saying their water system "detected fecal indicators" in one of the wells in Sun ... More >>

Food Mystery: Vanishing of the Bees

Vanishing of the Bees - Trailer from Bee The Change on Vimeo. Honey, if you haven't heard about the disappearing bees, you are in for a shocker! Vanishing of the Bees is a film currently screening across the country (this Sunday in Palm Beach Gardens) about the massive disappearance of bees from hi ... More >>

Ann Coulter: Crazy Like a (Three-Eyed, Five-Legged) Fox

​Ann Coulter says crazy things. She does it all the time, and most of us are used to it. But there's crazy, see, and then there's Crazy -- the kind of blithely lethal insanity that'd make you scream and run if it weren't proffered by a pretty, grinning, blond lady on The O'Reilly Factor. And Ann's ... More >>

Introducing George "Barely True" LeMieux

For the past week, Sen. George LeMieux has been obsessed with skimmers. So obsessed that he's found one to match his salmon tie, as you can see above. Recently, Politifact.com busted out its bullshit detector and put LeMieux's claims to the test.

Health Secretary Critiques Obama Before Oval Office Address

Flickr: Pan-African News Wire​The blame game started about a second after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon opened a geyser of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and it's too late to stop the game now. So we may as well try to at least separate fact from fiction, starting with the POTUS.With that in ... More >>

Former CEO of Broward Health Now Managing Louisiana's Health Response to Spill

Flickr: anslataadams​Maybe managing the massive, notoriously incestuous North Broward Hospital District wasn't enough of a challenge for Alan Levine. He left that post in December 2007 to become secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. In a little more than two years, he's ha ... More >>

Controversial Herbicide Atrazine Will be Used Through At Least September

Flickr: Loz FlowersSugar Cane Atrazine = BFF?​Farmers equate saying goodbye to atrazine to depleting Floridian agriculture. But a growing number of scientists believe atrazine, an herbicide widely used to remove weeds and promote the growth of cash-crop sugar cane, may cause cancer and birth def ... More >>

Top 10 Grossest Foods We Eat Everyday

Walls and walls of yuck.​On Bizarre Foods, host Andrew Zimmern travels the world eating eyeballs, testicles, bugs, and rotted meat. But the show isn't just Fear Factor with a balder, plumper version of Joe Rogan. The program is supposed to illustrate the difference in foodways between us and other ... More >>

EPA Investigates Link Between Cancer and Atrazine, the Chemical Behind the Cane

Flickr: parhessiastesSugar Cane: Harmless plant or serious accomplice?​These years have not been kind to the proverbial Floridian wallet: If Madoff didn't take your money, then Rothstein probably did, and good luck selling that 4-bedroom for more than the price of a Lego pirate ship. Now, Florida' ... More >>

FPL Plant Deals Dirty on the Race Question, Activists Say

FPL's Riviera plant: Looks great from a distance​Environmental activists and some Riviera Beach residents are fed up with living with "one of the dirtiest power plants in the entire state of Florida," according to a news release from the Palm Beach County Environmental Coalition. The Coalition, a ... More >>

Chinese Drywall Has Left Tens of Thousands of Homeowners Out of Options

Sunday Reading: The Wayne Huizenga Story

I just happened on this classic written by Steve Almond in 1994 about South Florida's hard-driven, complicated, and sometimes brutal mogul.  Uh, it jumps.   Citizen Wayne - The Unauthorized Biography A college dropout and the product of a broken home, H. Wayne Huizenga rose ... More >>

Kick the Bottle

As the containers and costs mount, in South Florida and beyond, plastic is played out

Point and Chop

No amount of sharpening can save this dull blade.

Sushi Advisory

It Doesn't Suck!

Breathe easy, Simpsons fans. The movie is eeeexcellent.

Reef Madness

Thanks to the Delray-Boynton pipe, there's a nitrate-stoked party down there.

The Dirt on Dania

Something nasty was in an illegal dumpsite that a developer covered over. Just ask the neighbors.

Scripps Script

When it comes to the huge biotech project, the Sentinel's editorial license should be revoked

Wild and Dirty

Hemmed in, polluted, under police guard, the New River is still as untamed as it gets in Fort Lauderdale

River of Sludge

Sure, Hollywood's sewage plan is dirty. It pollutes the Everglades too.

Sooo Thirsty

Uncle Ken Wants You!

Don't Drink the Water, Seriously

Another health threat. Another cover-up. More incompetence. Welcome back to Pompano.

Poison Pill

Florida's first law to protect farm workers from pesticides died a quiet death, but now it's back

Look Back in Anthrax

Magazine mogul David Pecker rates public agencies' response to the Boca debacle

This School May Cause Cancer

The stalled reconstruction of Deerfield Middle School has littered the campus with a carcinogen. So why are students still there?

Letters

Adding Fuel to the Mire

A million gallons of petroleum has leaked into the environment at Port Everglades. So what's being done about it? Nothing.

The Killing Fields

For 24 years toxic soot from the Wingate dump rained down on Leola McCoy and her neighbors. She calls it environmental racism.