Though there is still room for mitigation, the cycle of flooding and drought will become more extreme.
Category: Environment
Posted inEnvironment
Louisiana’s rare growing coast, anchored by black willows and bald cypress trees
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.
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
Venture Global could be taking more than it gives in Plaquemines Parish
Nearly a century before Venture Global began building a massive liquified natural gas export terminal there, Port Sulphur got its start, as a company town. But when the company was finished, it took down much of the town with it. Environmentalists and economists see parallels today. They warn that Venture Global’s operation could again extract heavily […]
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
LNG plant operators change their tune on carbon capture
While tax subsidies allay financial concerns about carbon capture and storage (CCS), key questions remain about the controversial technology and whether it’s able to reduce carbon emissions.