After the parish council granted heavy-industrial zoning to Greenfield Louisiana for its grain terminal, Greenfield's legal counsel thanked supporters for enduring a lengthy legal back-and-forth. But the Banner sisters, founders of The Descendants Project, pledged that the battle would continue.
Recommendations for fixes to the city’s chronically troubled Sewerage & Water Board are now flowing from Gov. Jeff Landry’s task force and from the Water Justice Fund, which issued a report earlier this year. Advocates warn that, without a new revenue structure that includes tax-exempt properties, customers could shoulder the financial burden for citywide problems.
Commissioners approve rezoning of Greenfield property for heavy industrial use, despite a prolonged community push to keep the land’s residential zoning in this largely rural part of St. John.
Mayors from Louisiana and advocates from the Water Collaborative, Healthy Gulf, 1Mississippi, and the National Audubon Society asked Congress to invest in better water infrastructure and increase federal funding for farmer-led conservation.
They put out recycling bins and picked up cans during and after parades. In the end, this group of plucky nonprofit groups, with support from the city’s Recycle Dat! initiative, tripled the recycling totals for Uptown parades, diverting an impressive amount of trash from the River Birch landfill.
Advocates still hope to block the permits for Formosa’s proposed petrochemical complex in St. James Parish, a community at the heart of new research into the health effects of air pollution.
To rebuild marshes in the Barataria Basin requires terraces of sand, a map of nearby orphan oil wells and miles of pipe to carry dredged river sediment to degraded wetlands.
In the same week, a judge again barred the parish from making the Greenfield Property industrial. And parish-council critic Joy Banner filed a First Amendment lawsuit.
Banner planned to ask the council why they were retaining a lawyer to defend its president from personal ethical concerns. But she was interrupted by the council chairman, who cited an invalidated statute and warned her that, if she spoke, she could face criminal prosecution.
Though there is still room for mitigation, the cycle of flooding and drought will become more extreme.
