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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Aug. 5, 2010 – Saying its stock has dropped 40 percent because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Panhandle developer St. Joe Co. on Wednesday filed suit against Halliburton Energy Services Inc. for its role in the Gulf oil spill.

St. Joe, which owns 577,000 acres in Florida, filed suit in a Delaware court seeking damages as the paper company-turned-developer seeks to recover losses brought on by the threat of oil soaked beaches. About 70 percent of St. Joe’s Florida holdings lie within 15 miles of the Gulf of Mexico.

“We believe that Halliburton was grossly negligent and bears full responsibility for this tragic accident,” William A. Brewer III, lead counsel for St. Joe, said in a statement. “We believe Halliburton’s participation in the cementing process – and the company’s willful disregard of important safety measures – make it liable for the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and the catastrophic damages that it caused.”

The lawsuit claims Halliburton, one of the world’s largest cementing companies, committed numerous errors when pouring the casing for the BP Deepwater Horizon well. Among a litany of complaints, the suit says Halliburton opted for a faster, less expensive procedure to finish its work and did not use enough centralizers to secure the work.

The company reported that the explosion took place 20 hours after it had finished its work on the Deepwater rig. Cement used in the procedure usually sets within 18 to 24 hours.

“Halliburton has not seen this lawsuit yet,” said Halliburton spokeswoman Teresa Wong. “But from the information we have seen in the media so far, it appears to be without merit and we will vigorously defend it.”

Feds say most of the oil has been recovered

Also on Wednesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report saying 74 percent of the 4.9 million gallon Deepwater spill had evaporated, been collected or dispersed. The remaining 26 percent is either on, or just below, the surface as residue and weathered tarballs, or it has washed ashore.

“Teams of scientists and experts have been carefully tracking the oil since day one of this spill, and based on the data from those efforts and their collective expertise, they have been able to provide these useful and educated estimates about the fate of the oil,” says Jane Lubchenco, a NOAA administrator. “Less oil on the surface does not mean that there isn’t oil still in the water column or that our beaches and marshes aren’t still at risk.”

The estimates do not make assumptions on long-term impacts of oil on the Gulf, a process Lubchenco says will take time.

In other news, BP officials said Wednesday their “top kill” operation seems to have plugged the well that was temporarily capped late last month. The procedure involves injecting drilling mud into the borehole and using the weight of the mud to stop the leak. Cement is then typically added.

Source: News Service of Florida, Michael Peltier

TALLAHASEE, Fla. – June 18, 2010 – Florida’s efforts to renourish eroded beaches does not violate the rights of nearby property owners, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a case brought by Walton County landowners following 1995’s Hurricane Opal.

In a 15-page ruling, the nation’s highest court agreed with the state that beachfront owners are not severely harmed when renourishment efforts extend the distance their properties lie from the shoreline by, in essence, expanding the shoreline seaward.

The case stems from recovery efforts following Hurricane Opal, when Destin and Walton County began a process of pumping sand onto beaches, establishing a boundary line between public and private land to control future erosion.

Stop the Beach Renourishment, a not-for-profit group of six landowners, argued before the Supreme Court that these augmented beaches deprived them of direct beachfront access and should be considered a taking of their land. The First District Court of Appeal (DCA) agreed.

But the nation’s high court upheld the 2008 state Supreme Court opinion that overturned the earlier DCA decision. The state has a “constitutional duty to protect Florida’s beaches,” according to the Florida Supreme Court, and was within its rights by moving forward with renourishment.

Landowners’ rights were not violated, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, even if the extra sand increased the distance between the landowners’ property lines and the water.

“Regardless of whether an … event exposes land previously submerged or submerges land previously exposed, the boundary between (private) property and sovereign land does not change,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. “It remains (ordinarily) what was the mean high-water line before the event.”

Attorneys for the landowners said Thursday they we disappointed in the ruling, saying it further diminishes private property protections guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.

“Private property rights are a legacy forged in the American Revolution by our Founding Fathers and passed on to us through the generations,” attorneys Kent Safriet and Richard Brightman of Hopping, Green & Sams wrote in a joint statement following the high court ruling. “They are a cornerstone of our society’s prosperity and freedom. Today’s ruling weakens those rights to the detriment of private property owners everywhere.”

Source: News Service of Florida, Michael Peltier