This week on Behind The Lens, before Lt. Gen. Russel Honore retired from the U.S. Army, he commanded Joint Task Force Katrina, leading post-Katrina recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast.

Now, Honore leads GreenARMY, a coalition of groups promoting environmental issues across Louisiana. We asked him this week to discuss his group’s priorities for the Louisiana legislature’s 2019 session.

He offered an overview of pollution and environmental quality issues in our state.

Also, a New Orleans-based community group has won a legal case over a public records request to federal immigration authorities.

At issue is a controversial ICE program called the Criminal Alien Removal Initiative, which The Lens reported on in 2014. We spoke with Lens reporter Michael Isaac Stein about the court decision.

And an update on a story The Lens has been following in St. James Parish.

The Environmental Protection Agency has asked Mosaic Fertilizer to resume removing millions of gallons of wastewater from its gypsum-walled reservoir in St. James Parish.

Mosaic, the EPA and Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality have been in emergency mode since January. That’s when the company first alerted the agencies to apparent shifting of the soil layers beneath the stack, raising the possibility that the northern wall of the gypsum dam could breach.

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