Entries Tagged 'Gulf Shores' ↓

Ranging from the Southern Appalachians to the South Atlantic, this year’s Top Ten Most Endangered Places list illustrates the ecological, scenic, and cultural riches at stake in the South—and the important actions needed in 2011 to protect our environmental heritage and the legacy we will leave for future generations.

Nine months after the BP blowout, recovery efforts in the Gulf are still underway—and could continue for decades to come. SELC filed the first post-spill lawsuit challenging the lax government oversight that led to the BP blowout, and we continue to lead legal efforts to end industry control of offshore drilling and ensure that nothing like the disaster in the Gulf ever happens again. With a multi-front offensive that involves lawsuits, intense activity in Congress, and engagement with federal agencies, we seek to ensure that regulators assess all potential threats before issuing further leases or permits and that damaged Gulf Coast habitat is restored.

Top Ten Endangered Places 2011

Gulf Shores police have released the names of the six people they arrested after busting a meth lab at a motel.

An employee of the Microtel Inn on Highway 59 called police Monday. They said one of their guests reported a strange smell coming from a nearby room. When police knocked on the door of the room, they say one of the suspects was actually cooking meth. Police also found drug residue inside a truck driven by one of the suspects.

Police Release Names Of People Arrested In Motel Meth Bust

A woman accused of shooting into an occupied building entered a guilty plea Thursday in Baldwin Circuit Court.

Circuit Judge Charles C. Partin handed Mary Ellen Battle, 38, a 15-year suspended sentence for the crime. Battle must spend 5 years on supervised probation and pay nearly $10,000 in restitution, according to Assistant District Attorney Brett Anderson.

Woman gets suspended sentence for firing handgun into Gulf Shores residence with kids inside

Gulf Shores Police tell FOX10 News they have arrested seven people for cooking meth in the last 24 hours.

The first incident happened Sunday night when an officer was attempting to pull over a vehicle for following too closely. The driver of the car didn’t stop, and led the officer on a short chase. When the driver finally stopped, police found a rolling meth lab inside the vehicle. The male driver was arrested.

Separate meth lab busts nets 7 arrests

Baldwin County District Attorney-elect Hallie Dixon says double jeopardy may be a problem in the case against former Mobile County Commissioner Steve Nodine. “The issue will be, does double jeopardy prevent new charges from the same incident. And quite frankly, I have someone doing the research on that issue,” said Dixon.

Double jeopardy concern in Nodine case

ch cleaning procedures continue along the Gulf Shores coastline in preparation for what is expected to be a “business-as-usual” Spring break along Alabama’s Gulf Coast

“In Orange Beach, visually speaking, they have done a decent job,” said Mayor Tony Kennon, who was adamant about a Jan. 1 cleanup deadline. “The timeframe was met and that was our number one concern.”

Although cleanup is taking slightly longer to complete in Gulf Shores, Mayor Robert Craft feels good about the work being done.

Orange Beach mayor says Jan. 1 beach cleaning deadline reached

More than nine months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, calls for help from people hurt by the spill are on the rise, Paige Rucker, Project Rebound coordinator, said.

“We had 408 calls in December,” Rucker said of the agency that provides counseling and helps connect individuals and businesses to other service and assistance programs.

“We had an average of about 13 calls a day until Dec. 22 and we picked up doing 30 to 40 calls a day. In one day, we’ve had 53 calls.”

Calls to program counseling oil spill victims on the rise

Surge of quick payments on oil spill claims concerns lawyers

The nation’s highest filing rate for a county was in Baldwin County, Alabama, home to such resort towns as Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, which were hard hit by last year’s Gulf oil spill. It recorded 3,876 bankruptcy filings per million adults in December, more than seven times the national average.

Ala. counties lead nation in number of bankruptcy filings

Some people who accepted a “quick pay” settlement from the oil spill claims operation have had to sign more than one lawsuit waivers because of a formatting problem, according to claims officials.

Gaffe requires some oil spill claimants to sign release twice

Months of investigation by a presidential commission and other panels reinforce the likelihood that companies involved in the Gulf oil spill will be slapped with criminal charges that could add to the huge fines they already face, legal experts said Thursday.

The reports don’t blame a single person or group responsible for the series of mistakes. That means in the end no one may go to prison for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

BP, Transocean and Halliburton should survive thanks to their financial arsenal, though charges would take another chink out of their armor.

Criminal charges likely in oil spill

Gulf Shores, Orange Beach Snow Bird Calendar

Former Mobile County Commissioner Steve Nodine plans to hire a polling service to determine whether he should ask for his murder re-trial to be moved out of Baldwin County.

Nodine To Hire Polling Service

For a couple of weeks now, something has been washing up at Gulf State pier that has folks who work there concerned.

“There you go. Isn’t that great, it’s instantaneous.” What shows up as orange, is oil. Our sample, “That clearly is not related to this incident whatsoever,” says Alexander.

What’s Washing Up?

This year initial numbers based on traffic at local welcome centers shows and increase over last year. “Everyone out of two people we see here now we know from previous years because all these people come down here at the same time to get away from the cold, ” says Jerry Richardson from Michigan.

Snowbird Traffic Hopeful Sign

In a sign that the Alabama coast is moving forward in the new year, past the catastrophic oil spill that defined 2010 for so many, the Orange Beach and Gulf Shores city councils this week dropped states of emergency declarations.

Gulf Shores, Orange Beach rescind states of emergency