Federal study links coastal erosion to OCS energy exploration
Environmentalists have been saying it for years. Oil companies have staunchly denied it. Now a new study from the federal Minerals Management Service says yes, oil and gas pipelines that cut through wetlands do cause coastal land loss. The report, according to the Times Picayune, studied dredging of canals for laying pipe to production platforms in the Outer Continental Shelf of the Gulf of Mexico, where the federal government holds sway. Dredging canals to lay pipe caused the greatest land loss, while building spoil banks with the dredged material altered flooding patterns in wetlands. The combination allows saltwater intrusion, which kills native vegetation, causing habitat changes and ultimately coastal erosion.
None of this is new information. The real question is how this study will affect the percentage of federal responsibility and ultimately federal funding for Louisiana's coastal restoration.
Is it a crime for citizens to photograph, video, or take notes of a police officer in the line of duty, or a right protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution? Locally, such activity, as witnessed recently, will at the very least result in a night spent behind bars.
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.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
Episcopal School of Acadiana’s Dr. Joshua Caffery, chair of the school’s English Department, is headed to Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress as the latest winner of the Alan Lomax Fellowship in Folklife Studies.
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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