Earned Media
Debate Over The Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion
James Karst joins Tommy to talk about the debate over the diversion.
Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion
Lt Gov Billy Nungesser joins Tommy to talk about the concers over the diversion.
News
Oil firm's plan to abandon 1,700 Gulf of Mexico wells could mean 'environmental disaster,' say rivals
In its second bankruptcy filing in less than three years, Fieldwood Energy LLC has proposed abandoning what could amount to 1,715 wells, 281 pipelines and 276 platforms.
The wells Fieldwood wants to discard account for about 6% of the active wells in the Gulf. Responsibility for the unwanted infrastructure would likely fall to past owners, including BP, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron, or the federal government — and, therefore, taxpayers.
‘The water’s coming in’: How Grand Isle residents cope as their home washes into sea
Grand Isle saw federal investment in its protection well before any other Louisiana island, receiving help as early as 1976. That’s when the Army Corps of Engineers built a levee along the island’s length to protect residents from the gulf side. The Corps spent $25 million to upgrade that levee in 2009.
Battered regularly by storms, the levee often requires repair. Last year, Tropical Storm Cristobal’s surge punched a hole in the levee on Grand Isle’s western end and left the community especially vulnerable in the middle of hurricane season. The coastal authority spent more than $7 million to widen the beach to its 1980 footprint after the weather settled, but that will last only about 13 years before it needs more nourishment, Grandy said.
Yet restoring barrier islands the next time might be more difficult. With all of the restoration going on now, Grandy said Louisiana is depleting its sources of high-quality sand, driving up construction costs.
“The next big challenge is finding amounts of sand that are nearshore that are available to use for projects,” he said.
At the state and federal level, efforts to place sand and fix portions of the levee damaged by 2020’s storms will continue in the near term, Grandy said, and there hasn’t been talk of moving people off the island. The coastal authority is also working with the Corps to expedite the process for making repairs in the future, which saw significant delays last year.
Bill aims to help Mississippi River states and communities battle environmental problems
Advocates hope a new bill introduced in Congress will help Louisiana solve some of its most pressing environmental problems, including coastal erosion, river flooding, hurricane protection and the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.
NASA studies Louisiana delta system; area's wetlands at stake
"I've been working here 15 years, and one of the toughest parts about working in a delta is you can only touch one little piece of it at any one time and understand one little piece of it at one time," said Robert Twilley, a professor of oceanography and coastal sciences at Louisiana State University. "Now we have the capability of working with NASA to understand the entire delta."