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.
Category: Top Story
Posted inCriminal Justice
The DA’s office wants to use predictive analytics software to direct city resources to ‘places that drive crime.’ Will it work?
Some advocates worry it could lead to increased police presence in already under-resourced areas. But the DA’s office says that the data is only a first step.
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 inSchools
State releases 2023 school performance scores for New Orleans schools
The NOLA Public Schools district received a C again this year. Five New Orleans charters received an F.
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 inCriminal Justice
Jackson Parish holding pre-trial youth in unlicensed juvenile jail
Despite lacking a required DCFS license, Jackson’s detention center is housing kids awaiting adjudication — and collecting roughly $200 a day per kid from surrounding parishes
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 inCriminal Justice
‘Another step backwards’: $9.5 million private security contract for Louisiana youth prisons raises eyebrows
OJJ pays $75 per hour to staffing company for guards. Critics say that contractor seems to be “enriching themselves on the backs of Louisiana’s teenagers and taxpayers’
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.