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.
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.
Land on the parish’s West Bank intended as the location for the Greenfield Grain Terminal will remain residential until the court orders otherwise.
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’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
