Earned Media
'The Einstein of our coast' retires after decades of Louisiana environmental work
His seminal work laid out the need for human-made infrastructure to work in concert with southeast Louisiana’s natural marshes, trees and ridges. He showed, in simple terms, that the pieces must compliment one another to lower the risk that storm surge posed to a community.
By the early 2000s, the New Orleans native had already begun presenting the integrated strategy to public officials - but without much success. Katrina served as a wake-up call, forcing federal and state agencies to reckon with the dire need to change their approach. Now widely accepted, Lopez’s strategy underpins the state’s coastal master plan to restore and protect as much of its sinking shoreline as possible using a mix of green and gray infrastructure.
Natalie Snider, who first worked with Lopez when developing a coast-wide version of the Multiple Lines of Defense report, said his tireless pushes for policy change have always been based in facts.
News
After EPA auditor urges public warning, DEQ reviews cancer risk data for accuracy
It's been almost a year since the inspector general for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency urged agency officials to take "prompt action" to warn people living near 25 "high-priority" industrial facilities across the nation. Residents around five plants in Louisiana are still waiting.
The then-latest data from the National Air Toxics Assessment found that some communities had cancer risks from lifetime exposure to toxic air pollution well above and sometimes many times the minimum acceptable level due in large part to ethylene oxide emissions.
Louisiana coastal worker alleges dredge company ordered coverup of 2016 oil spill
A marine contractor who ruptured an oil pipeline during a Louisiana coastal restoration project – itself stemming from the BP oil disaster – blames the company leading the operation for the resulting spill and says it directed him to cover up evidence and keep quiet.
James Tassin, a heavy equipment operator from Harvey, is providing evidence to federal prosecutors for possible water pollution charges against Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Co., the Houston-based company that the government hired to rebuild a Plaquemines Parish island six years after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster oiled it.
Louisiana hasn't approved an oyster lease in 19 years; that's about to change
The department changed its leasing rules last year and has now started reviewing 35 applications that have gone unprocessed over the past 22 years. Some of these applicants have been tied up in litigation with the state over the oyster grounds in Jefferson, Lafourche, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and Terrebonne parishes.
$1.9B levee system price tag raises concerns
The federal government likely would pay 65% of the cost if officials give the project final approval, with state and local partners expected to pick up the rest. A local funding source has not been identified.
“We need for these things to work,” South Lafourche Levee District General Manager WindellCurole said. “But a levee that’s not quite as strong is better than no levee. Something is better than nothing.”
The Upper Barataria Basin project is intended to protect communities west of the Mississippi River in portions of Ascension, Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. James and St. John the Baptist parishes from flooding caused by a “100-year storm,” or a storm that has a 1% chance of hitting the region in any given year.
Mississippi River pollution plunged after passage of Clean Water Act, LSU study says
But a new LSU study shows that the lowest downriver reaches of the river have been getting cleaner since the 1970s, when Congress passed the Clean Water Act, a landmark piece of legislation considered one of the most powerful environmental laws in U.S. history.
The proof of the Clean Water Act’s prowess is in the data, said Eugene Turner, an oceanography and coastal sciences professor and the study’s author. Turner collected and analyzed federal, state and city water quality records from four Louisiana locations dating from 1901. His reconstructed record from a century's worth of river testing at St. Francisville, Plaquemine, New Orleans and Belle Chasse shows a clear and steady decline in bacteria, lead and other pollutants since the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972.