Big Oil & Our Wetlands

In a video by WWL TV Dennis Woltering talks about the destruction of Louisiana wetlands in LaFouche, Terrebone and Plaquemine parishes by big oil and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Final Blow

Cliff writes about the loss of his Ninth Ward home and the history it had three years after Katrina.

Schroeder says it all

Schroeder says it one hundred times better than I could ever have regarding the recent flare up between New Orleans Councilperson Stacey Head and Veronica "Whitney Houston wannabe" White.



Here's the video of Nagin discussing how he and Council president Jackie "Brownnose" Clarkson made things better

Here's a niblet of Schroeder's reaction


Ray Nagin is a freaking idiot! The man is a pandering racist himself! Just pull out that race card anytime you’re being scrutinized for ripping off the taxpayers.

Oh, and thank you, Jackie. You have about as much spine as a steaming colostomy bag. This ain’t a social. It’s about the taxpayers of New Orleans getting ripped off and shit on by a feckless, incompetent, stubborn, worthless man who enjoys the privileges of the office of mayor, without any of the responsibility or accountability.



On the subject of Mz White, Big Red Cotton says it all

Eli links to a petition to dismiss Veronica White here

Scuzzbuckets of the Week

The teachers and administrators in St. Tammany Parish who either refused to let students discuss Obama's victory or gave kids some bogus information
From the link above:


Many students said teachers displayed a clear political bias, and praised McCain in class while making disparaging remarks about the president-elect. Brandy Welch, a black eighth-grader at Slidell Junior High, said one of her teachers said that "Obama's not even from this country and that McCain is a war hero."

In some cases, students said they were threatened with punishment if they talked about the election.

"She said that if we did talk about (the election) she'd write us up, " 14 year-old Briana Seals, who is black, said of a teacher at Slidell Junior High School

Rachel Weaver, a senior at Northshore High School in Slidell and a white Obama supporter, said teacher and peer bias made her reluctant to voice her opinions. Some students used racial slurs to refer to the president-elect and her American history teacher simply ignored the election, Weaver said.

Makes me ill and happy that my daughter is no longer a part of this school system.

New BBQ for Slidell

We discovered a fantastic BBQ place in Slidell. Called Taste E Bones, their pulled pork sandwich (served on ciabatta bread) is fantastic.

Click here for their menu

New Orleans East Wetlands

Recently we took a trip down to Highway 90 in New Orleans East.

click photo's for full size versions



I drive some of Highway 90 going to and from work at the spaceship factory. Every day I notice how much damage the wetlands have suffered since Katrina. And the trees. Katrina killed thousands and thousands of trees .

For miles going east, away from New Orleans, this is the sight







This part of the swamps faces Lake Borgne, a lagoon in eastern Louisiana of the Gulf of Mexico. Due to coastal erosion, it is no longer actually a lake but rather an arm of the Gulf of Mexico. Its name comes from the French word borgne, which means "one-eyed".



Before Katrina, the trees in the photos above hid all of the wetlands you see past the dead trees. A good number of these trees were killed by saltwater intrusion created by Katrina's huge storm surge.

While we were snapping photos along Highway 90 near Powers Junction, when we discovered that a leg of Bayou Sauvage Wildlife Refuge was open once again to the public.



Different from the Refuge Boardwalk a mile or so up the road , the Madere has a boatlaunch and a short boardwalk that transports you from the traffic noise from Highway 90 into what seems like the heart of a bayou.





There are so many channels that you can canoe out to to do some serious wildlife watching.











For more info on Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge Click here

Ike and the wetlands

Hurricane Ike was over two months ago.

I'm finally finding the time to post some pictures hubby and I snapped during our trek around Slidell on the Friday morning Ike made landfall.

Although Ike came ashore in eastern Texas, everyone along the northern Gulf of Mexico felt his impact. The tidal surge created havoc days before, with road closures in New Orleans East and beyond.

Here's what we saw back in early September.
[click on pictures for full-size versions]


The Bayou Liberty bridge


The boat ramp at Bayou Liberty


Here's what it usually looks like.


A tree swing in a yard facing the bayou


Here's what it looks like when it's not flooding


Along Rats Nest Road in south Slidell there was an abundance of marsh grass that had been uprooted and washed ashore during Hurricane Gustav a week before.

Lake Pontchartrain was sporting whitecaps that day.(that's the twin spans in the background)



This structure is a victim of three hurricanes, but still standing.


This is what back-to-back hurricanes can do to your neighborhood when you live on the shores of the lake.


Along Hwy 11 in the community of Northshore, water was coursing across the road from the lake into the marsh.


This house was an island during that weekend.


Over in Lake Catherine about a month later we spotted this house. It looks as if maybe it was in the process of being built when Gustav/Ike came along.


All along Hwy. 90 in Lake Catherine were moutains of marsh grass that had washed ashore during Gustav and Ike.


A trailer that was tossed around in the floods of Gustav and Ike, laid to rest in this marsh grass.

The thing that stands out in my mind after seeing the storm surge from Hurricane Ike was how much more water came ashore compared to pre-Katrina storms. Katrina destroyed so much wetlands that there is now nothing to protect us against future storms...even those that don't hit us directly. We have to save our wetlands now.

Sunrise

Haven't felt the urge to blog lately...nothing irritating me enough, I suppose.

Anyway, here's a picture taken by my hubby during our morning commute into New Orleans.



Morning Commute taken from the Hwy. 11 Bridge across Lake Ponchartrain

A Parcel of Scuzzbuckets

This really is nauseating. When I first moved into Slidell, almost 30 years ago, I ran across a group of KKK morons at an intersection. Being from up north, the sight of these racists made my blood boil. Then there were the David Duke years. Ugh.

Just when you think people have come up to 21st century intelligence, a story
like this shows up. It's really sick.

From the article:

a woman from Oklahoma was murdered by the leader of a local KKK group in the woods near Sun when she attempted to leave an initiation ceremony over the weekend.

...the victim was camping near Sun as part of the initiation ritual when an argument broke out between her and the group’s leader, 44-year-old Raymond “Chuck” Foster of Bogalusa....the woman asked to be brought back to town and Foster shot her once, killing her.

..in an effort to conceal the crime, several of the groups’ ...the first information on the crime came when investigators with the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office received information about a possible killing in the woods..they then called detectives with the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit to alert them to a possible homicide and personnel from both agencies began a search for a crime scene, before discovering the victim’s body in a canal.


The woman’s body was located near the end of Lock 3 Road in Sun.


View Larger Map

St. Tammany and Washington detectives said they made telephone contact with five members of the group who were still in the woods....by that time Foster had split from the rest of the group and was alone in another area of the woods. Two other members had already returned to Bogalusa and were speaking with authorities.


Here's a shot of the brains who committed/abetted this crime


Sickening.

This is not right

From the Times Pic:

Because some shippers are worried about losing an area where "parking spots" used by as many as 30 ships near Pilottown at Head of Passes near the river's mouth, the most effective existing sediment diversion in fighting coastal erosion may become bankrupt. Pilottown as a base for river pilots to guide ships across the bar and up and down the Mississippi River. It is located a few miles above Head of Passes, the point considered to be the mouth of the Mississippi River. Below there the River splits into multiple branches. This is part of the active delta front that has, over time, built up the larger Mississippi River Delta.


Space-shuttle photograph of the Mississippi Delta region, southeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi.
A = Grand Isle,
B = Head of Passes, Mississippi River,
C = Chandeleur Islands,
D = Mississippi Sound.
Adapted from NASA JSC, STS-51C-143-027, 1/85

The Breaux Act Task Force voted to close the West Bay diversion on the Mississippi River. The Army Corps of Engineer officials estimated it will cost $140 million -- about 20 percent of all money available in the remaining life of the small project coastal restoration grant program -- to dredge the anchorages through 2023.

The Breaux Act program -- whose official title is the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act -- will have $682 million available through its authorized life, which ends in 2020.

Now let me get this right: The Army Corps of Engineers is suggesting that they use $140 MILLION dollars from a Coastal Restoration Program to dredge parking spaces for boats? Do the citizens of Louisiana get a vote on this farce?

More from the TP:

The West Bay diversion allows 20,000 cubic feet per second of sediment-laced water to flow into the bay, with a goal of creating 10,000 acres of wetlands during its first 20 years of operation. The original plan was to expand it to 50,000 cubic feet per second in a few years to speed the filling process.

A Plaquemines Parish official warned the state board that threatening the diversion sends the wrong message to Congress at a time when Louisiana needs billions of federal dollars for coastal restoration projects.

You bet your ass it sends the wrong message! Louisiana is lucky if it has ten years left to restore the wetlands devastated by Katrina, Gustav and Ike.

I realize that shipping is a major industry for this area, but this area won't be here if we don't actively pursue REAL coastal restoration now.




Several state and national environmental groups also criticized the decision.

"Restoration projects will change the coastal landscape. We can't back off from inevitable trade-offs, " said Maura Wood, of the National Wildlife Federation. "We must solve these problems, not just give up."

"The fact that this decision contemplates closure of this diversion without more substantial scientific review is shocking and cannot be allowed to stand, " said Steven Peyronnin, executive director of the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.

The corps' New Orleans district commander, Col. Alvin Lee, said state officials earlier signed a cost-sharing agreement that made the Breaux Act program responsible for those costs.

Even without the signed agreement, Lee said, existing congressional authorization language prohibits the corps from paying to keep the anchorages clean of sediment because they sit outside the river's navigation channel.

The corps already has developed three alternatives for closing the diversion.

A team of officials from Breaux Act agencies -- the corps, Environmental Protection Agency, National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Natural Resources Conservation Service and the state -- also will conduct a study looking for financing alternatives or ways to reduce shoaling caused by the project.

George Duffy, president of NSA Agencies Inc., a marine shipping firm, urged the task force to pay for the dredging of the anchorages, saying the line of parking spots near Pilottown is important for ships seeking shelter from storms and hurricanes.

Duffy said the anchorage area never required dredging before the West Bay diversion opened in 2003.

"We could anchor over 30 vessels there, " he said. "Now we're down to five or six deep draft, and in some parts of the lower end, we're down to 12 feet of water.

"Even offshore supply boats can't get in that area."

I wonder how much all these huge shipping firms are willing to kick in to search for alternatives. Mr. Duffy's company certainly has a stock in restoring the wetlands, as it's located in St. Rose, Louisiana.




.

Scuzzbucket of the week

....or maybe he's a WACKO of the week.

from the Times Pic:

FRANKLINTON, La. -- A 61-year-old Franklinton man is accused of killing four small dogs belonging to his neighbors and setting their bodies on fire.



Melvin Holmes has been booked with resisting an officer and with four counts of aggravated cruelty to animals. If convicted on all four counts, he would face at least four years in prison and a $20,000 fine, and up to 40 years on those charges.


The Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office learned about the incident when it received a call from Sandy Boudreaux at around 6 p.m. Saturday.


“The lady was getting ready to move, and she had her dog running around and playing in the yard with some other dogs,” said Deputy Chief Shannon Lyons. “Then she discovered her dog had gone missing, so she checked around. She smelled a strange burning smell, and investigated. She found a fire and (four) small dead dogs in the fire. One of them looked like hers. She called the sheriff’s office.”

She was in the midst of moving to Abita Springs when she returned to her Cypress Road residence to pick up a load. She brought her 18- month-old rat terrier/Chihuahua mix, Maggie, so the dog could have a visit with her puppy friends from the old neighborhood

By the time the vehicle was loaded up and ready to go, Maggie had disappeared. Boudreaux searched the neighborhood. She saw Melvin “Bubba” Holmes, who lives in a FEMA trailer behind her house.

“He said he hadn’t seen her, then he changed the conversation,” said Boudreaux. “He said it was going to be lonely when we moved. I asked him, if he did see her, to keep her and I’d be right back.”

When she returned about half an hour later, she took up the hunt. She noticed an odd smell, and she went to check it out.

“I went down on my knees,” said Boudreaux. “I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t quit crying. I couldn’t really tell what it was. I had to get a stick. Then I realized it was a little puppy head. Maggie was under one of the puppies.

“I didn’t even want to believe it. That was just about all there was to the fire. Two or three branches were on top of them. And it had been a while. They were almost unrecognizable. When I asked him earlier if he’d seen her, she must have already been there.”

“Holmes admitted to the complainant that he shot the dogs,” said Lyons, reading from the WPSO report.

Boudreaux has a couple of questions about that.

“He said ‘we’ did it,” she said. “I think there was another guy involved, but he’s not saying. And I couldn’t tell if the dogs were shot. Maggie was almost in a fetal position. If she was burned alive, that’s what would happen.”

Boudreaux said she did not hear shots.

“I did hear kind of a yelp, but they were playing,” she said. “Maybe the dogs wandered into his yard, but they weren’t doing any harm. He could have called me. I would have gotten them all. We never had any problems before.”

Holmes, 61, of River Road, was charged with aggravated cruelty to animals and resisting an officer.

The penalty for the cruelty charge is “not less that $5,000 and not more than $25,000, with or without hard labor for not less than one year or more than 10 years, or both,” said Lyons.”

And that goes for each involved animal, he said. If the owner of the puppies decides to also press charges and he is convicted of all counts, Holmes faces those penalties times four. He could potentially owe $100,000 in fines and 40 years at hard labor.

That’s small consolation to Boudreaux.

“I’m devastated,” she said. “My 13-year-old son is devastated. My 83-year-old mother; It was her dog. I kept her at my house because she just couldn’t. My whole family is devastated.

“She was such a precious little dog. I’m horrified that someone could do something like this.”

Boudreaux buried all of the dogs near one another in her Cypress Road yard, though she said she might eventually move them.

“We put Maggie where the baby pool was,” she said. “She liked to get in and bite at the water.”

Boudreaux said the cross marker reads: We love you. Maggie and her friends;murdered by Bubba Holmes (in the FEMA trailer) on November 1, 2008.

Holmes could not be reached for comment.