Fifty years after the historic 1973 flood, land is still forming in the Wax Lake and Atchafalaya River deltas. It’s held in place by the roots of coastal trees, which protect from flooding and hurricane winds and store carbon dioxide.
Author Archives: Delaney Dryfoos
Delaney Dryfoos covers the environmental beat for The Lens. She is a Report for America Corps member and covers storm surges, hurricanes and wetlands in collaboration with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk. Prior to joining The Lens, they reported on climate change resiliency in New York City for Inside Climate News. She holds a master’s degree in science, health and environmental journalism from New York University, where she worked as the managing editor for Scienceline and an editorial intern at Living on Earth. As a college intern for NJ Advance Media, Dryfoos covered news across New Jersey and their story about South Orange’s rainbow lampposts was republished by U.S. News and World Report. She is passionate about reporting on the intersection of health and the environment as well as working to make journalism more inclusive of disabled and LGBTQ+ sources and reporters. She studied biology, global health, policy journalism and media studies at Duke University.
Posted inEnvironment
Lighthouse network expands, as St. John Parish opens Louisiana’s largest resilience hub for solar energy and storage
As St. John, the nation’s most climate-vulnerable place, opens the state’s seventh Community Lighthouse, other struggling communities try to fight LNG export terminals and open community solar projects.
Posted inEnvironment
Judge halts industrial rezoning for proposed grain elevator site in St. John Parish
Land on the parish’s West Bank intended as the location for the Greenfield Grain Terminal will remain residential until the court orders otherwise.
Posted inEnvironment
Threats facing fragile lower Mississippi river delta to be addressed – and possibly mitigated – by five-year, $22 million research consortium
Tulane University and Louisiana State University will lead the Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative – working with researchers from the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program, six HBCUs, four Southern universities and two Louisiana marine-focused nonprofits – to ‘navigate the challenges of sea-level rise, erosion and shifting river dynamics’
Posted inEnvironment
Historic drought at root of ‘superfog’ and massive I-55 wreck
The combination of fog and thick smoke may return this weekend, as a peat fire in remote New Orleans East swamp burns underground. Unlike the fire in Lafitte, which is actively being battled by firefighting crews, the Orleans blaze is largely unchecked. But it’s now watered by two pumps from the Sewerage & Water Board pouring the equivalent of two Olympic-size pools a day into the marsh.
Posted inEnvironment
Louisiana’s inland, non-tidal wetlands are most at risk to lose protections from weakened Clean Water Act
As the Clean Water Act turns 51 today, environmental advocates scramble to understand a new judicial interpretation that leaves more than half of the country’s 118 million acres of wetlands unprotected, including the swamps of Acadiana and key waterfowl habitat.
Posted inEnvironment
Federal review finds grain terminal would harm historic sites in climate-vulnerable St. John Parish
Several historic sites would suffer “adverse effects” from construction of gigantic Greenfield Grain Terminal, says review of rural St. John the Baptist Parish – which was recently placed at the top spot of a nationwide list of places vulnerable to climate risks.
Posted inEnvironment
Residents look to St. John Parish history to save a rural stretch of the West Bank from industrialization
West Bank residents fighting the gigantic Greenfield Grain Terminal are heartened by news from the National Park Service, which will spend the next year considering a largely rural, 14-mile stretch of Great River Road for a prestigious historical designation.
Posted inEnvironment
Marathon proves why it was the last refinery built in the U.S.
Noxious refinery fire deals another blow to Garyville neighbors, weary of fighting harmful emissions. Across the river, the blaze strengthens neighbors’ commitment to block the introduction of industry there.
Posted inEnvironment
‘Addressing our coastal crisis head-on’
Though serious concerns remain about fresh water altering coastal ecology, the hope is that Louisiana ultimately could create more coastal land than it loses, with this $2.9 billion diversion of lower Mississippi River.