Federal funding of sand replenishment has been cut off since 2005, leading to further reduction in sand added to the peninsula.
So precious, in fact, that it has set off skirmishes among counties and has unleashed an intense hunt for more offshore sand by federal, state and local officials who are already fretting over the next big storm.
As a result, Alberta has extraordinary clout in federal politics, and tar sands influence reaches deep into the federal cabinet.
Federal prosecutors cited the Sands' "voluntary and complete disclosure" of its activities involving Mr. Ye Gon, as well as the company's "extensive" cooperation in the investigation, as the basis for the agreement not to prosecute.
Federal prosecutors said Mr. Sands, 50, had burned the houses for his own twisted reasons and had then fabricated the secret organization, Coalition to Save the Preserves, as camouflage.
The federal probe, according to Sands' statements, is an outgrowth of the private lawsuit filed in Nevada last year by Jacobs, the executive who ran its Macau operations for over a year.
Authorities introduced a commercial leasing program permitting the extraction of oil shale and oil sands on federal lands in 2005, in accordance with the Energy Policy Act of 2005., industry uses oil shale in Brazil, China, Estonia and to some extent in Germany, and Russia.
The US program was restarted in 2003, followed by a commercial leasing program in 2005 permitting the extraction of oil shale and oil sands on federal lands in accordance with the Energy Policy Act of 2005., shale oil extraction is in operation in Estonia, Brazil, and China.
Federal District Judge Leonard B. Sand in Manhattan rejected appeals for sympathy from Joseph Pignatiello, 54, of Coral Springs, Fla.
