Her most public environmental fight began in 2013, when Martin County limestone mining company Lake Point Restoration sued her for contract interference. She sent emails urging county commissioners to back out of the Lake Point deal, which she feared would destroy the wetlands and cause other harm.
In court, Ms. Khurchalla argued that she exercised her First Amendment rights. But Lake Point countered that it misled commissioners and made false statements that cost the company money. Lake Point offered to close the case if she apologized publicly. She refused.
In 2018, the jury found against Ms. Khurchalla and decided that she should pay Lake Point $4.4 million in damages. She didn’t have money. Sheriff’s deputies confiscated two kayaks and a 2004 Toyota Camry that used to belong to her sister before Lake Point returned them. Last year, the US Supreme Court denied Ms. Khurchalla’s request to hear her appeal in the case.
“I’m not at all sorry that I spent the last seven years fighting” for the First Amendment, she said in an email to The New York Times after the Supreme Court decision. “In the meantime, I’m going to go kayaking and will continue to say what I think.”
Margaret Sloan Reno grew up the third of four children on a rural Miami-Dade County homestead on the edge of the Everglades, with peacocks, raccoons and donkeys living in the backyard. The Miami Herald paid to connect the house to a telephone line so that her father, Henry Olaf Reno, a police reporter, could call the police departments every morning looking for a scoop.
He was pleased when his wife, Jane Wood Renaud, an op-ed writer for the rival Miami News, beat him to the punch. Ms. Wood Renault, a naturalist, built most of the estate by hand, despite the fact that she has no experience in building.
Maggie studied psychology at Swarthmore College and met Jim Hurchalla, an engineer. In 1968, they moved to Stewart, Rocky Point, and built a house on a $5,000 lot on the banks of the Indian River.