Free Republic

Scientists have long said the only way to restore Louisiana’s vanishing wetlands is to undo the elaborate levee system that controls the Mississippi River, not with the small projects that have been tried here and there, but with a massive diversion that would send the muddy river flooding wholesale into the state’s sediment-starved marshes. And most of them have long dismissed the idea as impractical, unaffordable and lethal to the region’s economy. Now, they are reconsidering. In fact, when a group of researchers convened last April to consider the fate of the Louisiana coast, their recommendation was unanimous: divert the...

Katrina, Rita Actually Helped Wetlands, Study Says Willie Drye for National Geographic News September 21, 2006 A new study makes the provocative claim that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita actually helped stabilize coastal wetlands by depositing tons of silt and sediment—even as the storms devastated dozens of square miles of the low-lying areas. The new findings contradict long-held theories that rivers are the primary source of the sediment that forms wetlands, says research leader R. Eugene Turner, an ecologist at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. The study also counters beliefs that the loss of wetlands—especially on the eastern Louisiana...

Money added to state budget for West Bank storm damage: BATON ROUGE -- After spending more than $13 million to subsidize a West Bank golf club before Hurricane Katrina, the state is now poised to spend half a million dollars more to replace storm-damaged trees on the course. The additional aid to the privately operated Tournament Players Club Louisiana is tucked into the state budget passed by legislators this spring and signed by Gov. Kathleen Blanco. The budget lists the $500,000 expenditure as a "forestry program for the planting of trees and other native plants due to losses sustained from...

Where are the Hurricanes? I blame global warming...http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1155133659.shtml Scott Kirwin Aug 9, 2006 Nearly a year ago the country was being slammed by hurricanes. As Americans suffered some claimed that the ferocity of Katrina and Rita was due to global warming. A search of Dean's World shows that this site is one of the few that argued against that idea over the course of 2005. So here we are, a year later. Where are the hurricanes? Where is the fury of Mother Nature? Where are her righteous swirls of rain and wind that shall smite the evil non-Kyoto Protocol signing...

A representative from the state economic development office urged OPEC officials at their meeting Monday in Vienna, Austria, to consider building a U.S. refinery -- the nation's first in 30 years -- on Louisiana sugar cane fields. The state is trying to snag a refinery or some other major foreign investment, particularly in one of the parishes battered by Hurricanes Katrina or Rita, said Lana Sonnier, spokeswoman for the development office. Dane Revette, the agency's energy director, succeeded in "getting Louisiana on the radar" with his presentation, Sonnier said. She added that Revette has attended at least one other meeting...

The lingering lesson of Hurricane Katrina is the great value of self-reliance and the terrible danger of dependence. It was a huge storm. Possibly the largest natural disaster ever to hit the United States. It was the storm of the century. But it taught us more about human nature than it did about the power of nature. More frightening than the storm itself, was the widespread personal failure demonstrated in its wake. It was a peek into the entitlement culture and a sad display of the unwillingness and inability of some Americans to take the slightest responsibility for themselves and...

BILOXI - While New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin continues to get criticized for his actions and inactions before, during and after Hurricane Katrina, Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway has been a media darling. It seems that Holloway, 63, has made all of the right moves before, during and after the big storm. Despite that fact that many Biloxi neighborhoods were hit just as hard as Waveland and Bay St. Louis, Holloway's keen preparation and a little luck helped him and his city get back into the fight more quickly than most. “I put our success to the people of Biloxi,” Holloway...

Katrina & Rita - 1 year later - Appeal for help from a resident near Ground Zero... Let's see what the power of Freep can do to motivate the United States Government and it's legislators and beauracrats for 2 small Parishes (counties) in the United States of America compared what it can do for a hostile country roughly twice the size of Idaho (Iraq)

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco sued the federal government on Thursday in an ongoing dispute over Louisiana's share of federal royalties generated by oil production off the state's coastline. The suit accuses the federal Mineral Management Service of disregarding the environmental damage caused by oil and gas exploration, particularly after the damage done to the coastline last year by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Blanco seeks an injunction blocking a scheduled Aug. 15 lease of 4,000 blocks in the western Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration.

BOULDER, Colorado, June 26, 2006 (ENS) - Global warming created about half the extra warmth in the waters of the tropical North Atlantic that stimulated hurricane formation in 2005, while natural cycles were a minor factor, a new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research demonstrates. The research by world leading climate scientists contradicts recent claims that natural cycles are responsible for the increase in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995 and adds support to the theory that hurricane seasons will become more active as global temperatures rise. While researchers agree that the warming waters fueled hurricane intensity, they have...

NEW ORLEANS - Five people ranging in age from 16 to 19 were killed in a street shooting early Saturday, the most violent crime reported in this slowly repopulating city since Hurricane Katrina hit last August. All were believed to have been gunned down while inside a sport utility vehicle that was found rammed against a utility pole in the Central City neighborhood just outside the central business district. Authorities said they were looking for one or more suspects but did not elaborate. Capt. John Bryson said police think the shootings were either drug-related or some type of retaliation attack....

WASHINGTON -- The government doled out as much as $1.4 billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found. Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address, and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to wrongly get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation's disaster relief agency. Agents from the General Accountability Office, the investigative arm of...

Finally, a silver lining in all of that salt water that flooded parts of Louisiana during hurricanes Katrina and Rita: A lot of pesky fire ants died. The invasive little bugs, which bite with a real sting and often push “good” ants out of an area, apparently don’t mix well with salt water, according to findings by LSU Agriculture Center entomologist and Professor Linda Hooper-Bui and her researchers. Fire ants arrived in Mobile, Ala., from their native South America in the early 1900s and have spread across the southern United States. They are found in all 64 Louisiana parishes. Researchers...

Local "entreprenuer" arrested... Detectives: suspect sold gas from driveway, then dyed hair. Round Rock man accused of stealing thousands of gallons from stores. By Claire Osborn AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Wednesday, May 10, 2006 It was the hair dye that helped detectives zero in on Shawn William Hoskins. Travis County sheriff's detectives, looking for leads on who had siphoned thousands of gallons of fuel from two convenience stores, got a Crime Stoppers tip to check Hoskins' address in Round Rock. They drove there to interview him, according to an arrest affidavit. During the interview, the affidavit said, Hoskins' 13-year-old daughter came home...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Math scores for fifth-grade students displaced to Texas after last year's hurricanes are lagging significantly, mirroring similar low scores in reading. Just 45 percent of the 2,396 fifth-graders who enrolled in Texas schools after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita passed the math portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, according to the Texas Education Agency. Statewide, 81 percent of Texas fifth-graders passed the April 4 math exam. Students must pass the test before they can advance to sixth grade. Officials blame students' low scores on New Orleans' poor schools, the trauma of being abruptly uprooted from...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, April 27, 2006) – Volunteering to work in public affairs for Task Force Guardian is somewhat like plunging into Lake Pontchartrain. It immediately awakens all of ones senses, while providing instant meaning to priorities and issues of real importance. While the experience was meant to expand my media-relations knowledge, it’s also schooled me in the power of the human spirit. As a Department of Army public affairs intern, I didn’t expect to have the opportunity to deploy to an emergency operations center. When the chance was offered to work with the Corps of Engineers, I quickly...

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has decided to parcel out over a seven-year period the $14.4 million remaining from a record-setting burst of generosity by Presbyterians despite some complaints by hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast states that the denomination has been slow to respond to their needs. The decision to adopt a seven-year plan was made during a recent meeting of PDA's advisory board. The denomination raised $23 million in response to hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. About 70 percent of the contributions were made within 90 days after the storms. Donors were not informed that the distribution of their gifts...

The deaths of 23 elderly Hurricane Rita evacuees in a horrific bus fire could have been prevented had the driver inspected the vehicle before leaving and known enough English to tell passengers where the emergency exits were, according to documents used to build a criminal case against him. Those documents also assert that the driver, Juan Robles Gutierrez, admitted to investigators that he tried to avoid police detection by switching the bus's license plates. The combination of all of these factors proved to be lethal," Dallas County sheriff's deputies wrote. "The driver's actions, had he been in compliance with the...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Entertainer Bill Cosby urged New Orleans' black population on Saturday to cleanse itself of a culture of crime as it rebuilds from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina last year. Cosby, whose criticism of some aspects of modern African-American culture has stirred controversy in recent years, told a rally headed by black leaders that the city needed to look at the "wound" it had before Katrina struck. "It's painful, but we can't cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound," Cosby told the rally of about 2,000 people in front of the city's convention center.

August 27, 2006, Capt. Larry Hooper packed his house and head out of the little town of Empire, Louisiana, located 60 miles south of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River. He decided to leave on the 27th to avoid the rush of traffic on the 28th. Left behind were 3 boats, 2 trucks, all fishing equipment, in effect, everything he owned. Taken with him were 3 tank tops, 3 pairs of shorts, 2 cats and his car. Fully expecting to return to Empire 2 days later, the wrath of the storm completely wiped Empire off the face...