William M. Hartnett

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Campy pest control ads, late-night real estate infomercials, countless public appearances and a record-setting lack of stature turned Palm Beach County’s own Rice brothers into a singular brand name.
John and Greg, it seemed, were everywhere, and always together.
Emceeing Lake Worth’s Christmas parade, together. Mingling with local dignitaries at [...]

Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and with memories of the 2004 hurricane season still fresh, we told readers what would happen if “the big one” struck South Florida. I used SLOSH model data, property records and population statistics to describe the impact that a Category 5 hurricane would have on our [...]

This story about an Ohio investor who bought dozens of homes in a single neighborhood used to be accompanied by an interactive map, which I also made. I took pictures of every house owned by the investor and linked them to a parcel map of the entire neighborhood. The map also featured more than a [...]

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
It has been ridiculed from its inception, and the improbable industry it was born to nurture never caught on, yet Florida’s sales-tax exemption for ostrich feed endures.
Created in 1992 - when it was not uncommon to sincerely believe that the meat of large, flightless birds would find a [...]

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Palm Beach County’s elections canvassing panel had reviewed thousands of votes by Thursday evening when Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore shielded her face with a provisional ballot and whispered to an assistant and the other board members.
Was a conspiratorial plot twist about to be unleashed upon the county’s unsuspecting [...]

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
CLEWISTON - Of all the paths taken by the hundreds of people who sought refuge from Hurricane Frances in a middle-school gym, surely none was as monumental, as inspirational, as essentially implausible as that of Jose Castro.
The native of Brazil is five months into an expected 2 1/2-year [...]

Missing here is the great graphic that was pretty much the main reason for writing this story. It simply compared the contemporary and inflation-adjusted monthly average price of a gallon of regular, unleaded gas since 1976. I could describe it further, but let’s just leave it at this: I can’t find an image of the [...]

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
SEBASTIAN - Through freezes and hurricanes, tiny Pelican Island has literally clung to life, its sandy shores held together by little more than mangrove roots, its very existence under constant, subtle assault by the erosive currents of the Indian River Lagoon.
The national wildlife refuge that bears its name [...]

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Scarcely minutes after the first reports that the space shuttle Columbia had been destroyed, Internet speculators were already scooping up accident-themed Web addresses.
Whether destined for use as online memorials or for sale through auction sites such as eBay, scores of such Internet domain names as columbiadisaster.com and shuttlecrash.net [...]

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
In the 16 years since it was produced in a Philadelphia garbage incinerator, a 2,200-ton load of ash that now sits in a barge south of Stuart has criss-crossed the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, accumulating an itinerary that reads like a traveler’s delight.
Turned away from Bermuda, the [...]