WATSON — The Army Corps of Engineers and the Kansas City Southern Railroad have reached an agreement in principle on long-term maintenance for a new railroad bridge planned over the future Comite River Diversion Canal, a Corps project manager said…
PLAQUEMINE — A retired appellate judge appointed to hear a longstanding oil field legacy lawsuit involving the Spanish Lake swamp breathed new life into the landowners' damage claims this week when he granted them new hearings that keep Shell Oil …
Claire Delaune and Pam Sepeda love watching the hummingbirds that gather on the feeders outside their Baton Rouge homes — so much so that the neighbors often find their conversations revolving around how many and which kinds of hummingbirds they’v…
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Ella Armstrong has battled flood water that's poured into her New Roads home more times than she can count. She and her neighbors in Pecan Acres, a quaint community in Pointe Coupee Parish, have had to contend with the neighborhood flooding 17 tim…
WASHINGTON — Louisiana’s status as a leading domestic energy producer played a crucial role Wednesday when the U.S. House spent hours debating whether offshore oil and gas drilling should be permanently banned nearly everywhere else.
Mosaic Co. is idling its Louisiana phosphate operations, including a once troubled complex near Convent, for the next three months to cut production and reduce an oversupply of agricultural fertilizer in the North American market.
A recent poll found that 71% of Louisiana's voters believe in climate change and 50% say they're seeing its effects today, leading pollster Bernie Pinsonat to conclude that opinions in Louisiana are changing on the subject.
DONALDSONVILLE — More than three years removed from the August 2016 flood, Ascension Parish has taken an important step to limit the potential for future flooding connected with new development. In so doing, it sought to balance the concerns of an…
An environmental group that has questioned the management of Baton Rouge's drinking water aquifer has launched a campaign to encourage major industries to end their use of the region's groundwater while demanding that Baton Rouge Water Co. detail …
Officials behind a $1.25 billion chemical plant proposed for St. James Parish say they are taking a step back to review the scale and location of the new facility.
Financing deal moves along new fresh water pumps for Bayou Lafourche, thirsty downstream communities
Officials signed an agreement Wednesday laying out the financing plan for a $65 million expansion of the pumps that supply fresh water to Bayou Lafourche and the more than 300,000 people who rely on it for drinking water.
Bayou Chene was reopened to maritime traffic Tuesday following removal of a barge that was deliberately sunk on the waterway southeast of Morgan City to prevent backwater flooding from the Atchafalaya River, authorities said.
Members of a commission struggling to create a 50-year strategic plan for managing the region's aquifer tossed around a lot of ideas at a recent meeting for preserving the vital resource but endorsed no specific measures.
Neighboring parishes downstream from Baton Rouge have cast a wary eye on a $255 million Army Corps of Engineers project to clear out East Baton Rouge's waterways using federal dollars coming to the region after the August 2016 flood.
Gaseous hydrochloric acid leaked from a pipe at Westlake Chemical's vinyl chloride monomer unit in Ascension Parish, creating a visible haze Wednesday afternoon to the north of the plant across a highway, company officials said Thursday.
State health officials are warning residents to limit their exposure to mosquitoes after confirming nine cases of West Nile Virus in people — the first registered infections this year — including a handful of severe cases in the Baton Rouge area a…
Sizable majorities of likely voters in Louisiana believe in climate change, say weather is becoming more extreme and that it will affect future generations, according to a new survey.
Three protesters of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline challenged a Louisiana law aimed and protecting "critical infrastructure," saying in a lawsuit filed Friday that they were arrested in violation of their free speech and other civil rights.
Ascension Parish says $60 M loan for sewer at risk if Parish Council fails to act; some want to wait
GONZALES — In January 2009, Cedric Grant, at that time the Ascension Parish chief administrative officer, announced parish government would seek millions of dollars in federal loans through the state Department of Environmental Quality for a new r…
With the Mississippi River falling below flood stage after months of high water, Baton Rouge city-parish workers on Thursday began power-washing the downtown levee front and pier of river silt and other debris.
GONZALES — An outgoing Ascension Parish councilman and chief advocate of beefing up and extending a controversial flood protection levee in the St. Amant area says it's time to end negotiations with Livingston Parish and go back to court to resol…
The Mississippi River's record run in flood stage at Baton Rouge hit 211 days before ending Sunday afternoon, blowing past the former, 92-year-old record by 76 days.
U.S. Geological Survey facilitator Michael Runge took to the drawing board after nearly an hour and a half of discussion by regional groundwater commissioners about long-term objectives for the Southern Hills aquifer.
State environmental regulators won't allow Mosaic Fertilizer to use an abbreviated review process as it seeks to install 12 high-powered fans to evaporate hundreds of millions of gallons of radioactive and acidic water laced with heavy metals from…
DONALDSONVILLE — Revisions to a major land use ordinance that could affect how thousands of Ascension Parish landowners use their property remained a work in progress and one firmly behind closed doors Thursday.
After a critical state audit, an ethics complaint and charges from environmentalists that the "foxes are guarding the hen house," the Capital Area groundwater commission will kick off a lengthy strategic planning process Thursday to answer its mos…
As Hurricane Barry bore down on the Louisiana coast, a unique scenario presented itself: a tropical storm with surge and severe rain threatened the state during a record period of high water in the Mississippi River.
VACHERIE — Wanhua Chemical's bid to build a $1.25 billion chemical plant in Convent hit delays Wednesday after the company's plans to seek exemptions to federal trade tariffs recently came to light and temporarily clouded the previously assumed lo…
GONZALES — Three-term Ascension Parish Councilman Randy Clouatre showed up Tuesday at an open house for the public to review a $200 million plan to bring regional sewer service to his parish with a nearly 18-year-old newspaper article tucked in a …
GONZALES — Ascension Parish government took a combined $5.1 million in losses for its sewer, water and Lamar-Dixon Expo Center operations in 2018 before past savings, grants, transfers from other government funds and other sources covered the shor…
After brush with scary Comite River forecasts during Barry, interest in diversion canal remains high
PORT HUDSON — The contractor flipped down his protective mask and set off a shower of sparks as he welded a seam across a long pipe set up in a pasture along the highway near here.
Two environmental groups and two St. James Parish residents claim the Parish Council and Planning Commission violated state open meetings law when they held secret meetings concerning the $1.25 billion Wanhua chemical plant proposed for the Convent area.
Iberville Parish will be taking down the inflatable flood barriers that were installed along Bayou Manchac Friday as Hurricane Barry was bearing down on the state and appeared to pose an imminent flooding threat to the region, an attorney for the …
GONZALES — Waterways in Ascension and Livingston parishes will close to recreational traffic until further notice starting 6 p.m. Saturday, parish officials said.
National Weather Service forecasts for river flooding in the Baton Rouge region remained alarmingly high Saturday afternoon even as predictions of rainfall for the region fell with Hurricane Barry's path slipping farther west than expected.
GONZALES — Ascension Parish government and municipal officials urged residents Saturday not to let their guard down and remain vigilant, although Hurricane Barry hasn't yet brought the severe rain that had been predicted.
Update: 9:45 a.m.: A lawyer representing Iberville Parish government said Saturday morning that the parish president took no actions to install water-inflated flood barriers along Bayou Manchac after a federal judge ordered a halt to the dams earl…
GONZALES — The Lamar-Dixon Expo Center will open 8 p.m. Friday as a temporary shelter for Ascension Parish residents who fear they will be "at risk" as Tropical Storm Barry passes by the Baton Rouge region this weekend, parish officials said.
ST. GABRIEL — About 20 trusties at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center were manning two partially automated sandbagging machines late Friday morning at the rear of the huge state prison complex in Iberville Parish ahead of Tropical Storm Barry.
As Tropical Storm Barry pushes toward landfall Saturday between Morgan City and Vermilion Bay as an expected Category 1 hurricane, local officials and tens of thousands of residents are eyeing what impact its rains will have on rivers that brought…
EBR plans suit to block Iberville Parish from installing controversial aquadams to avoid 2016 repeat
East Baton Rouge Parish plans to sue neighboring Iberville Parish to prevent water-inflated flood barriers known as AquaDams from be used to protect against high water on Bayou Manchac, the city-parish mayor-president said Friday.
Sherrie Mack is one of a group of people cautiously watching news updates, unsure how seriously to take the likely onslaught of a weather system that if it intensifies, will be called Hurricane Barry.
Under new air permits proposed for Formosa’s $9.4 billion plastics complex in northern St. James Parish, the planned operation could emit enough new toxic chemicals to nearly double what already is released into the rural parish’s air.
PASCAGOULA, Miss. — People and pets are being warned to stay out of the water along the entire mainland of the Mississippi Gulf Coast as toxic bacteria continue spreading eastward.
CONVENT — As Mosaic Fertilizer struggles to control nearly 1 billion gallons of acidic and radioactive process water brimming inside storage lakes at its St. James Parish complex, it has an emergency fail-safe option that could involve dumping it …
As green-blue algae swirls in the Mississippi Sound, twelve beaches across Hancock and Harrison County remain closed to the public, according to a report from the Sun Herald.
An internal push is afoot to find a new, full-time administrator for a leading regulator of the Baton Rouge region's endangered Southern Hills Aquifer, a drive the current, part-time director says is a campaign to pressure him to resign.
A Texas federal judge has found a huge Formosa plastics complex northeast of Corpus Christi to be a "serial offender" with a history of allowing plastic pellets to wash into wetlands and bays along the Gulf of Mexico, and said that the company has…
GONZALES — In a rare move, the Ascension Parish Council agreed Thursday to hire its own engineering representative to vet a possible compromise on limiting the use of dirt to elevate homes as a handful of members also aired their support for a sho…
At least 279 dolphins have stranded across much of the U.S. Gulf Coast since Feb. 1, triple the usual number, and about 98 percent of them have died, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday.
PRAIRIEVILLE — Fast-growing but low-lying Ascension Parish's endless struggle to maintain clean water and improve drainage showed itself on several fronts this week, as the parish grappled with policing runoff from new home construction and took a…