Legislature must demand that Mid-Barataria Diversion proceed, as planned
At stake is decades of scientific consensus, years of bipartisan commitment and the credibility of Louisiana’s entire coastal program.
Category
Environment
Through a new Mississippi River channel, Mother Nature shows the land-building power of sediment diversions
As the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion flounders amid politics, some scientists say that doubts about its effectiveness can be addressed by Neptune Pass, which branched off the Mississippi on its own and is creating the largest new delta in North America.
LNG terminals threaten to push Calcasieu River pollution ‘beyond repair’
The shrimp stopped coming up the Calcasieu River after Venture Global built its Liquified Natural Gas terminal. The river’s ongoing pollution, on top of decades of hazardous waste dumping, earned the Calcasieu the #9 slot on American Rivers’ 2025 list of most endangered rivers.
Levee board members have no sway over Army Corps design
The Army Corps controls the design and operational procedures of flood reduction, so it doesn’t matter whether the governor selects the levee board members or if a panel picks candidates – or even if we choose the first nine people coming out of church on Sunday.
In Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, a legacy of resistance lives on.
In the River Parishes, at the site of the largest slave revolt in history, a new generation is fighting for a cleaner future.
Mississippi River named the most endangered of 2025 by non-profit American Rivers
With budget losses to both the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, mitigation grant programs to address riverine flooding could be impacted substantially. According to FEMA, every federal dollar spent on flood mitigation yields $7 in benefits.
Down the Drain: A watershed moment for America’s greatest wetlands
The Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, a journalism collaborative based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report for America, publishes an examination of how legal and policy changes will impact wetlands in the basin.
One Iowa landowner fights to farm a designated wetland. Others could face consequences downstream
The 1985 "Swampbuster" law — which has protected millions of acres of U.S. wetlands from being cleared and plowed — is being challenged in court.
A Mississippi flood relief project could harm 90,000 acres of valuable wetlands. Is it worth the tradeoff?
The Yazoo Pumps project purports to reduce flooding while protecting farmers and minimizing environmental harm. But concerns over wetland degradation have stymied past, smaller versions of the project.
Framing wetlands as a flooding solution won bipartisan support in Wisconsin. Could it work elsewhere?
Communities across the state are testing the economic value of grant programs to build new wetlands that reduce flooding risk. In the upper Midwest, researchers found that wetlands save nearly $23 billion a year that would otherwise be spent combating floods.
