The Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone" off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas could reach 8,800 square miles, roughly the size of New Jersey. Louisiana scientists and NOAA officials say the recent Mississippi River floods have been a major contributing factor and will release the latest official data later this month.
The dead zone is an area in the Gulf where oxygen levels drop too low to support life in the bottom waters and threatens both commercial and recreational fisheries. Nitrogen levels have tripled in the Gulf over the past 50 years. Last year, the dead zone was 7,903 square miles. In 2002, the largest dead zone on record, the area measured 8,481 square miles.
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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