Martin County Commissioner Sarah Heard was not officially arrested Tuesday, as reported in a story that appeared in Sunshine State News Wednesday.

Correction and Apology:  This story includes a link to a September 28

story which reported that the State Attorney was investigating potential

criminal violations arising from the public records litigation between

Lake Point and Martin County. In the original version of this story, we

referenced the September 28 story and said that “A criminal investigation

of Heard, Hurchalla and others by the grand jury … is currently under

way.”  We have revised this story to delete Ms. Hurchalla’s name because

we have no information that she is the target of the investigation and we

did not intend to imply otherwise. We regret the error and apologize

to Ms. Hurchalla. On November 29 and 30, we reported on the arrests

of Commissioner Ed Fielding and former Commissioner Anne Scott, who

are charged with criminal public records law violations, and on the charging

of Commissioner Sarah Heard with a non-criminal public records violation. 

It's over. After four and a half years of litigation and more than $5 million spent on outside attorneys -- plus a grand jury investigation of the actions by four current and previous commissioners -- the Martin County Commission announced a settlement Tuesday with Lake Point. 

The State Attorney’s Office on the Treasure Coast has apparently launched a criminal investigation into the Lake Point public records case in Martin County.

One of the radical rewrites of the Martin County Comprehensive Growth Management Plan by the 2012 county commission, and engineered by Martin County’s “shadow government,” likely will be rolled back at Tuesday’s Board of County Commissioners meeting. Finally.

When Martin County Commissioner Sarah Heard voted two years ago not to fund a DNA study of the pollutants in the St. Lucie River by Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute's Brian Lapointe, we were somewhat surprised at her dissent … but our most environmentally concerned citizens trusted her.

Florida’s first, true “water farm” exceeds all expectations, according to state officials. An expanded Caulkins Water Farm on 3,200 acres near Indiantown holds the promise of relief to the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon estuaries from annual deluges of polluted water -- up to half of the water storage needed to reduce annual discharges by 90 percent. 

NOTE FROM EDITOR NANCY SMITH: An inconvenient truth is never "shameful."