Sunset over the marshland in Southwest Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana.
Lights and smoke at Port Fourchon, two years after the Macondo oil well blow out and subsequent six-month ban on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
The port, located at the state’s southernmost habitable tip, is considered the epicenter for oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico.
The sprawling, 1,700 -acre port is home to 250 companies. It serves as a throughway for more than 15 percent of the nation’s oil supply, according to the Greater Lafourche Port Commission. The port is estimated to generate $4 million in business sales and $950,000 in household earnings throughout south Louisiana.
And about 2,505 workers in the state were let go as a result of the ban, according to a state tally last year of people who filed for unemployment and checked a box saying the drilling moratorium had left them jobless.
More in the article by Cara Bayles.
It’s Christmas eve, and holidays mean time with family. This leads to a lot of questions about what I’ve been doing in Louisiana since moving to Houma 4 and a half months ago. Sometimes I answer intelligently.
I have to take myself back to the day I got a completely different view of the wetlands of Terrebonne parish, thanks to an educational grant from the Louisiana University Marine Consortium, or LUMCON.
We were flying to observe coastal erosion: where marshland, which was once between the populated inland regions and the salty gulf waters, has slowly receded. Every year, a land area greater than the size of Manhattan disappears into the water. Read more. Read even more.
This is the result of a variety of factors, both manmade and natural. Certainly, man’s role has accelerated the process, and man is central to fixing the problem.
The fallen trees are a sign of saltwater intrusion, what happens when the salinity of the water increases after land sinks into the ground.
What this means for coastal Louisiana is yet to be fully understood, as an ecological disaster of this proportion is unprecedented. With increased salinity in the inland waters, the biodiversity that has created such rich fisheries for the people of Louisiana will ebb away, and the thousands who live down the bayou will be forced to relocate as their homes sink into the water.
This is the kind of problem that is almost mind boggling in scale, but because it happens slowly, with centimeters lost gradually over time, it is hard to feel an immediate effect. Even though the water line is observable where cows once grazed, their lacks the certainty that emirates from other equally dire environmental problems like species extinction, rainforest destruction or oil spills.
My perspective on environmental issues is that there are no other problems more important. Why bother reporting on the sports games, the parties, the activities of the rich and famous when the ground beneath your feet, the “good earth” that gives life to everything in Louisiana is literally disappearing. Merry Christmas.
Mitchell Samaha shared with our writer and I his family tradition, going duck hunting with his children.
“Did you know that children who spend their free time outdoors, with nature are less likely to develop mental conditions when they’re older?” he would say. He had a few more of these kinds of arguments, which made me feel like we were interrogating him about his passion.
My intent, and undoubtedly the writer’s as well, was just to chip away at our ignorance on the subject of hunting. When your strongest childhood impression of hunting is Bugs Bunny cartoons, then there’s a good chance you aren’t going to be able to have a conversation with someone who does this to make a living. And here in Louisiana, where the year-round humid climate and brackish water creates a diverse and abundant ecosystem, there are many people who still live off the land in this way. The food they eat is lean, locally produced, non-toxic, non-hormal, non GMO…
Thanks to Mr. Samaha, I learned about a practice that historically has helped to restore wildlife populations, by allowing hunters to pour money into the natural habitat that will allow the animal to grow to hunt-able numbers. “The best way to make sure a species survives,” jokes Samaha, “Is to put it on the hunting list.”
“Who will speak for the trees?” asks Heath Frost of Oakland, California. After Pacific Gas and Electric planned to cut down the limbs of the Redwood trees on her property, she began to raise awareness for what she considered to be a hasty and unjust precaution. Redwood trees are notorious for shedding their lower healthy limbs as they grow taller, a danger to the power lines running below them.
Treanna Brown, 16, of Oakland gets down to the ground to reach trash in a dirty sewer on International Blvd in Oakland, California. “It really makes you think twice about littering, because I’m going to be right out here next year, cleaning up the same streets,” Brown said. Brown is working her summer job with the Youth Employment Partnership, funded by the Mayor’s Summer Jobs Program.
@HandsAcrossSand Approximately 20 people gathered at Albany Beach in Albany, Calif. They stood at the edge of the beach and held hands, looking outward to the San Francisco Bay. In the foggy distance, you could see sailing boats lined up in a row as well, stretching the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. They were gathered to protest offshore drilling, which was been proposed in several location off the coast of California.
Before the event, Zach Pine volunteered to teach the group in creating natural sphere sand sculptures, which were aligned on the beach parallel to those standing there. They would be washed away by the ocean, a non-destructive form of memorializing their efforts.
