Lifting the oil drilling ban on Lake Pontchartrain?
Lake Pontchartrain has been closed to new oil and gas drilling for 17 years, since the State Mineral Board voted to protect the ecosystem of Louisiana’s largest water body. Now, the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, which lobbies for the oil and gas sector has contacted Mineral Board Secretary Marjorie McKeithen, indicating that they will make a proposal to the board to lift the ban. “Opening up Lake Pontchartrain for exploration and development would provide the state additional revenues, severance taxes and royalties,” Louisiana Oil and Gas Association president Don Briggs told the Times-Picaune. “It would have a definite economic benefit to the parishes in the area of development, especially at a time when the state is facing a budget shortfall.” However, environmental groups that pushed for the ban oppose opening the lake back up to industrial development. “We have a tremendous amount of people who have put a lot of work into bringing Lake Pontchartrain back, . . . and the last thing we need is something that would increase risk,” Carlton Dufrechou, executive director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation, told the TP. There is an estimated 38 million barrels of oil and 137 billion cubic feet of natural gas below the lake. If the Mineral Board does receive a formal request from LOGA, there will likely be public hearings before scheduling a vote to overturn the ban.
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.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
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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