A screenshot from the first-place winner of the large market feature story prize from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment, “What Do the Protectors of Congo’s Peatlands Get in Return?” by Ruth Maclean and Caleb Kabanda, with photography by Nanna Heitmann, for The New York Times.
Inside Story: The Battle To Protect Congo’s Vast Peatlands
One of the world’s largest carbon sinks has long been protected by local communities in the Congo forests. But invading logging operators threaten this invaluable natural resource. New York Times reporter Ruth Maclean and journalist Caleb Kabanda teamed up to craft an award-winning, in-depth story about peatlands, an important element of nature that experts say is critical in the battle against climate change.
Judges with the Society of Environmental Journalists annual awards program were greatly impressed with the story’s richly character-driven, cinematic narrative, its detailed reporting, character portrayals and strong aerial and video components. They awarded it first place for Outstanding Feature Story, Large, in SEJ’s 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment.
SEJournal recently asked Maclean and Kabanda about the project by email. Here is the conversation, edited lightly for clarity and brevity.
SEJournal: How did you get your winning story idea?
Ruth Maclean
Maclean: The Congo Basin peatlands have been on my mind for a while but I had no idea what story I would find when I went there.
Kabanda: I was contacted by Ruth Maclean. She told me that she would like to come to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to report on the peatlands in the Congo Basin forests. She asked if I was available to work with her. I felt very excited because I found the idea and the story great, very interesting and very helpful to the whole planet, and to the whole of humanity. I had already heard about peatlands but didn’t know what they looked like. So, it was a great opportunity to visit the peatlands to witness with my own eyes what they look like and learn more about them. I made some phone calls and learned that no single journalist nor even DRC government officials have ever visited the Congo’s peatlands. Then, I told Ruth that her idea and story were fabulous because we would be the first journalists to report about it and get to witness what peatlands look like.
SEJournal: What was the biggest challenge in reporting the piece and how did you solve that challenge?
Maclean: Logistics and bureaucracy. I solved it with the help of the amazing Caleb Kabanda, my collaborator on the story.
Kabanda: The biggest challenges in reporting the series were getting permissions from the security services (the Congolese national intelligence agency that is the Congolese FBI) and accessibility. The peatlands are located in very remote areas, very far in deep Congo Basin forests, where you need to travel by plane, four-wheel-drive vehicle, speed boat, wooden boat and also travel long hours during the day and sometimes at night on foot under the rain in a deep jungle forest, crossing rivers, falling into mud, getting hurt sometimes by thorns and sometimes being stung by ants, in areas where there is no cellphone reception.
I got media accreditation to enable us to cover the story and I navigated the security services, explaining to them why it is important to inform the whole world about the importance of peatlands and forests to humanity, but also by gaining the trust of local communities, known as peatlands’ protectors, to talk to us, to explain to us what they know about peatlands and also take us to the peatlands. We convinced the local chiefs, along with local communities, that we want to spend much time with them. We want to see how they live and interact with peatlands. We want to learn from them what they know about peatlands. We want to learn what peatlands mean to them, what peatlands mean to the whole of humanity. After talking to them and explaining clearly what we came to do, they were convinced and open to telling us their stories and answering our questions. They allowed us to cover their daily activities in the peatlands, at home and more.
SEJournal: What most surprised you about your reporting?
Maclean: The desire of communities living around the peatlands to protect them for the world, despite having almost nothing themselves.
Kabanda: What personally surprised me is first, to see that the peatlands’ protectors (local communities living in remote forests around the peatlands) are well-informed about the role and the importance of peatlands and forests to the planet and to humanity. They explained to us how the forests and peatlands contribute to fighting against climate change. They showed us how peatlands and forests contribute to their daily living, in terms of feeding and treating their families. Second, I noticed that local communities are willing and managing to protect peatlands and forests but, unfortunately, they are very limited. They regret that polluters continue polluting the world and are demanding the peatlands’ protectors protect the forests and peatlands, but get nothing in return.
SEJournal: How did you decide to tell the story and why?
Maclean: In a long narrative with multimedia elements, because I was working with the incredible photographer Nanna Heitmann, had a brilliant editing team at The New York Times’ Headway, and because I encountered such great characters and was able to witness their struggle to protect the peatlands in person.
SEJournal: Does the issue covered in your story have disproportional impact on people of low income, or people with a particular ethnic or racial background? What efforts, if any, did you make to include perspectives of people who may feel that journalists have left them out of public conversation over the years?
Maclean: The whole story was focused on some of the poorest villages in the world. It was very important to listen to them and try to faithfully represent their perspectives.
SEJournal: What would you do differently now, if anything, in reporting or telling the story and why?
Caleb Kabanda
Maclean: There are so many angles I would have kept following, if only I had had more time.
SEJournal: What lessons have you learned from your story or project?
Maclean: To focus on people when doing environmental stories.
Kabanda: Peatlands and forests in the Congo Basin are in danger if no alternative measures are taken to protect them. Local communities survive from these peatlands and forests: Their main resources are forests and peatlands; they cut trees from the forests for firewood, making charcoal and planks. Local loggers and mainly international logging companies, conspiring with some corrupt individuals from the Congolese government, are badly and illegally exploiting timbers from the Congo forests. And most of the local communities earn their livings by fishing in peatlands, which poses a small-scale destruction threat to peatlands.
SEJournal: What practical advice would you give to other reporters pursuing similar projects, including any specific techniques or tools you used and could tell us more about?
Maclean: I would encourage other reporters to spend hours with their interviewees if possible and really try to listen.
Kabanda: For reporters intending to cover similar projects in the DRC and most of the African countries: Get legal permits/media accreditation for reporting. Get all required permissions, stamps and signatures from government and security services. Be positive in navigating local security services. Be patient in handling all the bureaucracies. Navigate local authorities and local communities to get their trust. Identify the best characters with good knowledge, well-informed about the area or the region. Get to know the customs of the local communities to facilitate good communication. Always remember to assess the security situation of the area of reporting. Work with a local professional fixer or local journalist who is professional in navigating any situation and who has a good array of contacts. With any obstacles, remain positive, patient and courageous.
SEJournal: Could you characterize the resources that went into producing your prizewinning reporting (estimated costs, i.e., legal, travel or other; or estimated hours spent by the team to produce)? Did you receive any grants or fellowships to support it?
Maclean: Two weeks on the ground, several more writing it up, thousands of dollars.
Kabanda: Reporting in DRC is very expensive. Media accreditation and a filming permit are extremely expensive. Plane tickets, car rental, boat rental and hotels are very expensive. Most of the infrastructure is almost dead. There are more bureaucracies and harassment from the security services, which always slows down the reporting.
SEJournal: Is there anything else you would like to share about this story or environmental journalism that wasn’t captured above?
Maclean: The Congo peatlands need and deserve much more attention.
Ruth Maclean is the West Africa bureau chief for The New York Times. Previously, she worked for The Guardian and The Times of London, reporting from Africa, Europe and Latin America for 15 years. She aims to provide nuanced coverage of the 25 countries she covers, with a focus on the people living in them.
Caleb Kabanda is a freelance journalist, camera operator, field producer, professional fixer and first aid responder for international reporters, filmmakers, movie stars and researchers. He is based in Goma in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and has worked with reporters from the BBC, National Geographic, The Washington Post and many others.
Editor’s Note: View a video interview with Maclean about her prizewinning story below.]
William (Rocky) Kistner Special to the Post-Dispatch Jun 13, 2024
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund.
ST. LOUIS — Robin Proudie remembers working concessions at the old Busch Stadium as a teenager, selling popcorn and peanuts to hungry baseball lovers. Her favorite memory is the seventh game of the Cardinals’ 1982 World Series. After the final out, she joined hundreds of frenzied spectators who poured on the field to congratulate the new champs. She remembers star shortstop Ozzie Smith picking her up in celebration.
But there is a part of Busch Stadium history that Proudie only recently learned about, a dark history linked to the building that was so dear to her. Historians say some of St. Louis’ most notorious slave prisons — known as the Lynch slave pens — sat near the intersection of South Broadway and Clark Avenue, where the new Busch Stadium, Ballpark Village and the InterPark Stadium East garage are now clustered.
Thousands of men, women and children were held in Bernard M. Lynch’s underground slave prisons before the Civil War, incarcerated in rooms with dirt floors, no beds and bars on the windows. Some were chained to basement cells, waiting to be sold to local buyers or “down river” to work in cotton and sugar cane fields.
Remnants of the prison cells survived in the basement of a large drug company warehouse and office building until it was torn down in 1963 to make way for the baseball stadium where Proudie worked as a teen.
“I had no idea…I’ve parked in that garage,” said Proudie, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Descendants of the St. Louis University Enslaved. “This is hallowed ground with people’s souls. It needs to be acknowledged publicly that their lives mattered.”
If pictures are worth a thousand words, what are videos worth? Whatever the answer, most will surely agree these nine short videos are priceless, representing the first-place winners in the Society of Environmental Journalists 22nd Annual Awards for Reporting on the Environment.
In their own words, journalists and producers describe what drove them to pursue and tell their stories, and the valuable impacts they have had.
Sean Peoples, a creative director and filmmaker with Think Out Loud Productions, has produced videos of SEJ award winners over the past three years, and he relishes the chance to talk to the award winners about the ways newsrooms and journalists work to come up with high-impact stories. “It’s really an iterative process a lot of the times to come up with stories that are this powerful,” Peoples said.
To highlight some of the reporting insights of these winners, we’ve distilled their video comments to key points focused on how they chose to report their stories. You can click each thumbnail to view the full video, as well as visit links below each to find out more about the project and to read comments from SEJ judges.
Story insight: The environment as a “true crime” story
The Washington Post’s “Amazon Undone” series, which won first place in the large-market investigative reporting category and later the top award for outstanding environmental reporting, took a whole-system approach to looking at deforestation in the planet’s largest and most vital rainforest, explained SEJ judges. Each article meticulously walked the reader through a contributing factor to the rapid deforestation of the Amazon.
But for one of its elements, the team took an unusual tack — retracing the steps of the most high-profile Brazilian murder cases in 2022. Terrence McCoy, The Post’s Rio de Janeiro bureau chief, remembers what prompted the choice: “We found a man who had been executed out there and his hands have been tied together and he just had been left in a ditch. That discovery helped to solidify that the story of the destruction of the Amazon isn’t like other environmental stories.”
For McCoy, the story of the Amazon is in many ways a crime story; as he put it, a story of mass criminality on a continental level, a crime story that has complicit officials, feckless law enforcement and murderous elements of violence. To tell the story in a fresh way to grab readers, McCoy’s method was to make it “breathe like true crime stories.”
Story insight: The environment as a “river” of ideas
AnuOluwapo Adelakun, an investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and policy researcher working on underreported issues in Nigeria, began reporting on how foreign beverage companies were using the country’s powerful Osun River as their water source. She quickly realized the river itself would become a central character in her reporting.
In winning SEJ’s small-market first-place award for outstanding investigative reporting, judges were impressed that Adelakun let the river guide her storytelling throughout, adding depth and emotional resonance to the reporting. “By amplifying the voices of the artisanal miners and demonstrating how their basic survival is contrasted with the exploitation by foreign corporations,” judges said, “the video educates viewers and humanizes those directly affected by it.”
“The Osun River is a very important river in southwest of Nigeria,” Adelakun recalled. “The people of the Osun have a spiritual belief that there is a goddess of fertility and so they also rely on that river as a spiritual symbol. … People are dying right now and if we don’t do something about it then nothing is ever going to be done, so ultimately I let the story take me where it wanted to.”
An investigation into the health and environmental effects of the chemical PFAS by the Chicago Tribune’s Michael Hawthorne was a “Herculean effort,” said SEJ judges who awarded him first place for outstanding beat reporting in a large market. They noted in part his year-long review of thousands of court documents, government records and scientific studies. ”This is a shining example of the finest kind of journalism.”
Hawthorne said an editor found a memo he wrote on PFAS and sewage sludge that dated back to 2009. “It’s a culmination of a lot of years that I’ve been fortunate enough to be in this job at two different newspapers. I’ve been doing it long enough that I can return to a story that I first started writing about almost 20 years ago.”
But Hawthorne said it was how he handled that long trajectory and the more recent flood of information that made the difference. “I’m not the kind of person who writes about everything that’s moving. I’m going to try to go where nobody else is going, … to try to find some nugget of information data records that shine a light that is meaningful to my readers.”
When Baltimore Sun reporter Scott Dance set out to report on how climate change is impacting communities in the Chesapeake Bay area, he decided to zero in on ways that communities were being affected differently. Judges were impressed with the breadth of his reporting that explained the diverse impacts of climate change: “We commend his sharp eye for how climate change and environmental neglect have exacerbated inequities between Black and white communities. … Dance shined light on a remarkable range of issues weighing on the greater Baltimore area.”
Dance said he purposefully looked for these differences as a critical part of the story: “Of course climate change is a global issue, environmental injustice is a global issue, but I tried to just stay focused on how those larger forces were playing out in my backyard and in our readers’ backyards. That’s what local journalism is so good at and so important for, showing the examples that are right under your nose that exemplify these larger issues the world is dealing with.”
Story insight: Environmental risks outside the headlines
New York Times reporter Raymond Zhong was well aware of the punishing droughts and fires that devastated California in recent years, but when he caught wind of some interesting new research on flood risks in the Golden State, he jumped at the opportunity to tell a story that hadn’t received much attention. It was fortuitous timing. Five months after his story appeared in August 2022, California was pummeled by a torrent of atmospheric rivers that turned the drought-plagued state into raging rivers and storms that killed more than 20 people. More atmospheric rivers have flooded the state this year.
SEJ judges were especially impressed with the story’s multimedia presentation that “captivated and educated readers in and outside California and spurred state officials to invest in research on flood risks. … ‘The Coming California Megastorm’ is, quite simply, extraordinary explanatory journalism of remarkable clarity and lasting import.”
Zhong said he simply did what all good reporters do, dig into stories in ways no one else is covering. “California flooding was not exactly at the top of people’s minds. … But part of what we should do as journalists is to elevate things that aren’t necessarily in the headlines every day and keep them in the conversation.”
Story insight: Powerful interests that inform important debates
Inside Climate News reporter Nicholas Kusnetz tackled one of the most controversial climate policies involving carbon capture technology, an attempt to bury greenhouse gasses underground, helping reduce oil and gas emissions that are major contributors to climate change. Although carbon capture had bipartisan support among industry and the Biden administration, Kusnetz felt there was a need for more in-depth reporting to get to the bottom of this emerging technology.
“You had all this money, all this interest from this really powerful industry that has been the biggest source of climate pollution, paired with the fact that there wasn’t really much coverage,” Kusnetz said. “So that was really what made me want to go and do this.”
Kusnetz was particularly interested in concerns about environmental justice impacts in communities that didn’t have the resources to understand the potential threats carbon capture could pose: “They were still sort of figuring out what they were going to be saying about this because it was dynamic and developing. So that was the place where I think the series at least aims to try to inform that debate.”
According to SEJ judges, Kusnetz more than accomplished his mission, shining light on a complicated topic with powerful interests driving the debate. “His reporting showed how the oil industry lobbied to shape climate policy toward carbon capture and storage. The result was more than $12 billion in federal spending from the bipartisan infrastructure bill and, last year, tens of billions more in potential loans and tax incentives for this controversial and largely unproven technology.”
Story insight: Environmental news inextricably linked to people’s stories
New York Times reporter and West Africa Bureau Chief Ruth Maclean had heard of the importance of the Congo Basin’s vast network of peatlands that sequester huge amounts of the world’s carbon, but she wanted to find out more about this important global resource. Maclean and her team traveled to the marshy peatlands threatened by deforestation, where local villagers protect the forest from loggers who threaten to destroy the rainforests and unleash sequestered carbon into the air.
Maclean spoke to researchers tracking the peaty treasure buried deep in the Congo. But the most important story, she said, is told by the people who live there. “My way into it is just to look at the people and try to meet them and understand a bit who they are and listen to their stories. … At the end of the day, we’re talking about the environment that we have to live in and look after, and it’s just inextricably linked with people.”
SEJ judges were floored by the beauty of the story narratives and the cinematic quality of the visuals of this story: “The exhaustive and detailed reporting, flecked with moments of dark humor, was complemented with great aerial and video components — readers felt like they were in the village, grappling with a thorny, high-stakes issue that’s both global and local. ‘Peatlands’ was at once satisfying in its execution of a narrative arc and left the jurors hungry for more.”
Reporting insight: Environmental stories focused on communities at risk
Journalist Anne Marshall-Chalmers heard about an unreported story from a fire expert that intrigued her. According to her source, small fires in California were having devastating impacts on low-income mobile home communities. Many of these people, she found, were being pushed out of urban areas and moved to high-risk, fire-prone areas.
As Marshall-Chalmers investigated further and traveled to mobile home communities in rural Lake County, she found out about a UCLA researcher who was gathering data on this topic. All of the information and reporting fit together to make a powerful story that broke new ground: “It really exposes the intersection of the lack of affordable housing and a warming planet,” Marshall-Chalmers said, “and how those two can create really difficult situations primarily for low-income people who are forced into areas that are more prone to burn.”
SEJ judges said Marshall-Chalmers “investigates a much-overlooked aspect of the human and housing cost of wildfires in California. … The narrative voice and choices keep the reader captivated until the end and have us all asking questions that we may not have asked before.”
Reporter Isaac Stone Simonelli was part of a student-led investigative multimedia project that examined poorly documented oil and gas industry methane emissions that are huge contributors to climate change. The unique collaborative project was produced by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State’s Cronkite School. Its stories were featured in nearly 200 news outlets, including the AP and Inside Climate News, and included detailed maps, a podcast and a documentary that revealed unknown methane releases.
“The Gaslit investigation was a fact check,” Simonelli said. “We wanted to compare how much gas the satellites were showing as being flared to what state regulators or actors in the oil and gas industry were saying was being burnt off at these sites to see if those two matched up.” The investigation included various teams of reporters focused on health and environmental impacts, and the economics of flaring and gas, as well as a data team.
Simonelli said comprehensive projects like these help launch young journalists’ careers: “It’s training the next generation of investigative reporters on how to really tackle ambitious, important projects. We’re sinking our teeth into stories that will have an impact.”
SEJ judges agreed. “Each story in the series added to the narrative thread of the series. ‘Gaslit’ was a unanimous first-place winner.”
Rocky Kistner is an independent journalist based near Washington, D.C., a co-editor of Inside Story for SEJournal and a board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Over the past four decades, he has written environmental stories for a variety of newspapers and national magazines, and produced environmental stories as a staff reporter for ABC News, Marketplace/Minnesota Public Radio and as a producer for PBS Frontline. Some of his stories can be found on his website www.TheRockyFiles.org.
Experts say there are financial speed bumps ahead for environmental startups like Dayts, especially as Israel endures an unprecedented period of political unrest.
Michael Ofran, a fruit and vegetable farmer from the Arava, was riding his bicycle home one morning a few years ago when he got lost in the broiling desert. It seemed the more water he drank, the hotter and sicker he felt.
When he finally made it home, his sister reminded him that he needed more than just water to battle the heat. His body needed minerals, electrolytes and other essential nutrients, too. Ofran began thinking about the date trees on his farm. Could dates, the nutritious and revered blessed fruit of the Bible and the Koran, become a superfood for the modern era?
Now several years later, Ofran and his colleagues say the answer is a resounding “Yes.” His Israeli startup company, Dayts, is getting seed money from global investors to develop new date-based natural ingredients for use as shelf-life extenders and nutritional supplements for everything from meat products to baked goods. They also have plans to use the natural antioxidant power of dates in industries, such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.
What’s more, their food products can use waste materials from a variety of dates that most farmers ignore or discard, saving energy and reducing climate-altering emissions like methane.That could have a big climate-fighting potential for the growing $13 billion (NIS 48.5b.) global date palm industry. And as the climate gets hotter, date trees are better acclimated to the heat and will suffer less than other crops, making them an ideal fruit in the era of climate change
Still, experts say there are financial speed bumps ahead for Israeli food tech and environmental startups like Dayts, especially as Israel endures a period of unprecedented political unrest. Frightened by ongoing political protests and economic concerns, credit agencies have warned about downgrades to Israel’s credit ratings, while some banks and investment funds have reported increased capital flows out of the country.
Despite these financial headwinds, the venture capital world is still alive and well in the “startup nation.” The industry’s innovative spirit was on full display at the 2023 OurCrowd Global Investor Summit in Jerusalem, last February, where thousands of participants and investors gathered in person for the first time since the pandemic. Over its 10-year history, OurCrowd has raised over $2b. (NIS 7.5b.) in commitments for hundreds of startup companies looking for capital, and leaders say investments continue.
This year, the summit highlighted a multitude of environmental startup projects, ranging from reforestation using drone technology to an array of new pollution control devices and energy-efficient food technologies. “Working with partners old and new, we can transform the Middle East into a net-zero region a global hub of sustainable solutions in food, water and health,” President Isaac Herzog told attendees.
There is a good reason the investment community is focused on green tech. Scientists say energy-efficient, nonpolluting technology is critical to fighting climate threats in the Middle East, which is heating up twice as fast as the global average and faces increasing dangers of deadly drought, blistering hot temperatures and rampaging rising seas.
Climate experts agree the Israeli government is not moving fast enough to plan for the increasing dangers associated with a rapidly warming climate, making it even more important for the investment community to fund new green technologies.
While the government has been slow to fund specific climate plans, nonprofits have stepped up. The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies has trained and educated thousands of young people from all walks of life. Many go on to work for green technology startups and businesses. “We use environment and science as a diplomacy tool to connect people,” executive director Tareq Abu Hamed told a meeting of journalists in Jerusalem, earlier this year. “We use environmental issues to build trust.”
“We use environment and science as a diplomacy tool to connect people.” Tareq Abu Hamed
It seems to be working. Last year at the UN climate meeting in Egypt, a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed between Israel and Jordon to swap solar energy power for desalinated water supplies. Experts say these are the kinds of policies that can spur sustainable business development in the region.
“The big elephant in the room is the climate crisis,” Gidon Bromberg told climate journalists. Bromberg worked on the MOU between Jordan and Israel, and he has a long track record of bridging international environmental agreements as co-founder of EcoPeace Middle East. “If we don’t learn and create the political will to work together, then the climate crisis will bring us all down.”
Many Israeli startup leaders agree. “We all have the same vision… Helping create a more peaceful environment with prosperity,” explained Shira Shaked Hemi, who has worked in the corporate food industry and is now the CEO of the women-led Dayts startup that includes the noted scientist and antioxidant expert Dr. Rina Reznik.
After all, dates have long been considered a blessed fruit in all corners of the Middle East. Now, she says, it’s time to put their sacred powers to work.
The writer is an independent journalist based in the Washington, DC area. He traveled to Israel in February with other journalists to report on climate issues funded by a grant from the Jerusalem Press Club.
First published in the Jerusalem Post, May 28, 2023
This week, after years of study, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers green-lighted a massive Mississippi River diversion project, part of Louisiana’s 50-year plan to protect and rebuild its rapidly eroding coast. The $2 billion river diversion in Plaquemines Parish, and another planned in nearby St. Bernard Parish, have never been built before on this scale. Supporters say they are best way to save coastal communities, and ultimately New Orleans, from the rising tides and increasingly powerful storms of the Gulf of Mexico fueled by climate change. Meanwhile, wildlife experts say dolphin deaths and damage to fisheries will be unavoidable.
The unprecedented $50 billion coastal restoration plan has deeply divided the environmental community across the region, pitting state political leaders, engineering and construction firms as well as major environmental NGOs against fishing communities, coastal experts and marine mammal scientists who worry that pouring billions of gallons of polluted river water into the marsh will destroy marine species like shrimp and oysters that depend on the saltwater environment. And it illustrates the growing decisions coastal communities face as climate change rapidly alters their environment.
A knife in the MMPA
At the center of the coastal restoration controversy is the fate of Barataria Bay’s 2,000 dolphins, one of the largest populations along the Gulf coast. Dolphin experts say the state has been disingenuous with the public about the extent of damage the river diversions will have on marine mammals in the area. And scientists are highly critical of a state scheme that successfully lobbied Congress to issue a federal waiver for the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), granting the state legal authority to harm dolphin populations as part of their diversion plans.
“They stuck a knife in the MMPA and wounded it very seriously,” marine mammal scientist Naomi Rose with the Animal Welfare Institute explained to me recently. Rose has closely followed the work of scientists studying the health of dolphins in the region, including many that were killed by the sudden influx of river water flooding in 2019. “I’m horrified by the way these dolphins will die. I can’t believe there isn’t a better way to save the coast.”
Engineers and diversion project supporters say there is no more efficient way to build marshland than to divert Mississippi River silt and sediment into coastal marshes, long walled off by levees that protect navigational traffic and coastal communities from flooding. By reintroducing river water sediment into coastal areas, project experts say the diversion project should create about 20 square miles of marshland over 50 years.
Some coastal scientists question those marsh-building claims, and say there are other ways to fight coastal erosion through dredging and other methods that won’t be as detrimental to the marine environment and threaten the livelihoods of fishing communities.
But few dispute the lethal impacts the river diversions will have on dolphin populations in Barataria Bay and nearby areas. Marine mammal experts point to the 2019 floods that killed a record number of dolphins in Louisiana and Mississippi, a disaster that shocked scientists. Hundreds of dolphins developed deadly skin lesions from a flood of fresh water that poured into marine environments, altering the salinity levels in coastal areas and spawning a huge blue-green algal outbreak that shut down Mississippi beaches for the summer season.
In studies and webinars, scientists described the impact on dolphins as a slow and painful death, starting with irritating skin lesions and infectious boils that in a matter of a few weeks erupted into skin ulcers and toxic brown mats covering parts of their bodies. Infections ate through their sensitive skin barriers, exposing internal organs to polluted freshwater. The result was cardiac damage, cerebral edema, kidney and liver poisoning, and ultimately septicemia and death. Experts predict the same disastrous future for more dolphins if the river diversions are built.
Sentinels of the sea
As critical marine mammals at the top of the ocean food chain, bottlenose dolphins are sentinels of the sea. Scientists says when dolphins are healthy, the ocean environment is healthy too. But right now, dolphins in Barataria Bay are not healthy.
According to studies, Barataria Bay dolphins are still suffering from effects of the 2010 BP oil blowout, which spewed millions of gallons of Louisiana crude into the coastal environment of four states. Much of that oil, sprayed with chemical dispersants that made it more toxic, washed into the Barataria Bay.
I was there when it did. In May of 2010, just weeks after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, I witnessed the impact of the oil on small pods of dolphins while looking for crude close to shore with a Louisiana shrimp boat captain. The petrochemical stench of thick brown clumps of oil was overwhelming, and the sounds of dolphins chuffing and choking as they swam though the oily invasion was hard to bear. Some likely succumbed to the oil’s poisonous effects that still linger today. The look on the captain’s face told it all: it we were witnessing a marine mammal funeral.
Many wonder why dolphins, some of the smartest creatures on earth, wouldn’t just flee such a poisonous aquatic environment. Experts say it’s not that easy. Bottlenose dolphins are extremely territorial, since they prefer to stay where they are born and bred. The environment of Barataria Bay is a refuge for dolphin populations and a critical nursery for their young. For thousands of years, it’s been a healthy, life-sustaining environment for the entire Gulf of Mexico. When the huge Mississippi river levee system was built over the past two centuries, sediment-laden river water was increasingly blocked from the bays. Dolphins moved even closer to shore areas as salinity levels increased.
But in recent years, the BP oil disaster and increasing storms and floods linked to climate change have been toxic to Barataria Bay dolphins. Marine mammal scientists say river diversions present an even greater existential threat to marine life in the bay. Dolphin experts are appalled that billions of dollars in settlement funds from the BP oil spill, money intended to protect the marine environment, is being used for coastal projects that may also cause significant harm.
Solving the dolphin problem
When the diversion projects were in the early planning stages over the past decade, Louisiana officials and project supporters knew there would be harmful impacts to dolphin populations protected by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. So Louisiana officials hired veteran DC lobbyists and worked with major environmental NGO leaders to get Congress to include an unusual federal waiver in a budget bill in 2018, allowing the state to injure and even kill dolphins in the course of completing and operating the diversion projects.
An article published by lobbyists Bob Salzo and Mary Landrieu, of the powerful DC lobbying firm Van Ness Feldman, described it this way under the headline Marine Mammal Protection Act Problem:
“Fortunately, several national environmental and conservation NGOs are committed to the restoration of Louisiana coastal wetlands. With their assistance, we were able to develop a very narrow amendment to the MMPA that waives the Act for the Mid-Barataria and two other coastal restoration projects in Louisiana. With the help of these NGOs, we were able to achieve the unanimous support of Congressional Republican and Democratic leadership to include the amendment in H.R. 1892, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, which was enacted February 9, 2018. Based on this legislation, the Secretary of Commerce has waived application of the MMPA to the Mid-Barataria project.”
Marine mammal experts were outraged by the maneuver to get around the MMPA, an act they view as crucial to protecting marine mammal species threatened by pollution, development and climate change. A study published this year in the journal Marine Mammal Science concluded that the Barataria Bay diversion project would cause a “catastrophic” decline in dolphin populations, making them “functionally extinct” in some areas of the bay. “The declines are predicted to be greater than those caused by the DWH oil spill and would take place just as the population is starting to recover from the oil spill.”
Louisiana state agencies and supporters of the diversion project have come up with a plan to closely monitor dolphins and move them if possible to other areas with higher salinity levels. But dolphin experts say such a plan is futile in the face of enormous amounts of river water that will be dumped into the Barataria Bay.
In a letter to the Army Corps in October, 2022, the Marine Mammal Commission, a nonpartisan U.S. government oversight agency, stated “none of the activities outlined in the Dolphin Intervention Plan appear targeted at mitigating or preventing harm or death of bottlenose dolphins expected from exposure to the low-salinity conditions that will result from the MBSD project.”
Mobi Solangi, executive director of Mississippi’s Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, says the marshes of Barataria Bay are critical nurseries for ocean life in the Gulf. In a letter to the Advocate published earlier this year, Solangi compared the diversions to the catastrophic floods of 2019 in Louisiana and Mississippi: “we lost an estimated 337 dolphins, over 200 sea turtles and thousands of acres of oyster beds, shrimp, blue crab, speckled trout and other species. Imagine what a 50-year freshwater flood will do.”
What do the NGOs say?
Despite concerns about the freshwater impacts on the marine environment, many high-powered environmental groups have continued to support the diversions, arguing that only giant projects on this scale can fight dramatic climate change impacts to coastal areas.
“This is a critical moment for the future of our coast and our entire state,” said Cathleen Berthelot, policy director with the Environmental Defense Fund in a September, 2022, press release issued by Restore the Mississippi Delta, a coalition of environmental groups that also include the National Wildlife Federation, Audubon Society and the Pontchartrain Conservancy. “For decades, scientists have indicated that the best way to address future land loss and maintain a sustainable coast into the future is by harnessing the natural power of the Mississippi River to build and maintain the wetlands. It’s time to make that prospect a reality.”
Fishermen have a different take on the river diversions, which they worry will destroy their ability to make a living. They feel abandoned by many in the environmental community. “A lot of people don’t know what’s going to really happen here,” said Capt. George Ricks, a recreational fisherman and president of the Save Louisiana Coalition that opposes the diversions. “These are the same people who were screaming about the BP oil spill killing dolphins, but more dolphins were killed when they had to divert river water into the Bonnet Care Spillway. Now it’s OK to kill dolphins?”
But other environmental groups oppose the river diversion plan, including the Sierra Club Delta Chapter that calculated a huge monetary price in terms of dolphins deaths. “During the 2010 BP oil spill many bottlenose dolphins died,” the group said in a statement to the Army Corps this year. “The price put on each life was two million dollars. At that rate, the cost of just killing bottlenose dolphins in the Barataria Basin amounts to about four billion dollars.”
And last year, a group of nine environmental and marine mammal NGOs issued a blistering letter in response to the Army Corps’ Draft Environmental Impact Statement, protesting the river diversions and questioning the policies behind its decision making and conclusions. “If this project is to move forward, we very much do not want the losses and suffering of these dolphins to be in vain. It is disturbing that we cannot in fact be confident that their sacrifice will result in Barataria Bay restoration.”
Dolphins pay the price
Naomi Rose’s Animal Welfare Institute was a signatory to that statement. The marine mammal expert is furious that federal laws put in place to protect dolphins was circumvented by Congress, still largely unknown by the public, she believes. And Rose is deeply frustrated that this issue has divided the environmental NGO community, organizations that share a common mission to protect wildlife and the environment.
“No one wants to be a dolphin killer, but that’s what they are. These dolphins will pay the price for our stupidity.”
Healthy cypress forests like the one pictured here at Bayou Sorrel, Louisiana, are part of what makes the Atchafalaya Basin a jewel of biodiversity. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, the nation’s largest cypress swamp, nurtures an abundant ecosystem and protects a critical coast. But years of exploitation and neglect have made it a “ticking time bomb” now threatened by climate change.
In the swampy heart of coastal Louisiana, more than a century of abuse and neglect threaten a national treasure: the Atchafalaya Basin, the nation’s largest cypress swamp.
The more than 800,000 acres of forests, lakes and bayous contain hard-to-access wilderness and trees that are over 1,000 years old. Some of the world’s great migratory bird populations stop here on their journey across continents, and its lush swamplands nurture an unparalleled diversity of animal and aquatic life, from threatened species like sturgeon and paddlefish to Louisiana’s world-famous crawfish.
A sign warns of a gas pipeline in Bayou Sorrel. Pipelines for oil, gas and chemical products crisscross southern Louisiana, laid in dredged-out canals that have blocked natural water flows through the Atchafalaya Basin. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
The area also has another abundant resource: oil and gas. Drilling rigs and hundreds of miles of pipelines mark the region, pumping out black gold that has long enriched Atchafalaya landowners. The oil industry has constructed a vast network of canals and “spoil banks,” or excavated piles of earth that rise 10 feet or more and act as earthen dams blocking the natural flow of water that drains south into the Gulf, a problem the oil and gas industry, landowners and state agencies have been reluctant to address.
Scientists say these spoil banks are turning vast areas of the basin into stagnant pools of swamp water that are strangling the cypress forests and damaging the fisheries. Without this natural flow, huge tracts of the Atchafalaya Basin could be left unrecognizable.
Experts say backfilling the canals, or providing more gaps in the spoil banks to let more water flow through, is necessary to make the basin more sustainable. A heated debate is underway between environmentalists and the landowners and oil companies who are resisting efforts to alter the banks — and imperiling the others who rely on the ecosystem.
An oil well, pipelines and storage tanks sit in the middle of the swamp. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
“What’s going on in the basin is criminal,” says Dean Wilson, head of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, a member organization that aims to protect the swamp. “The landowners don’t want to get rid of the spoil banks that are causing the problem. They want to get rid of the fishermen.”
And there’s another problem that extends beyond the basin: Increasing volumes of sediment and silt from farms and urban runoff are pouring into the Mississippi River upstream and are creating dangerous flooding potential for New Orleans and other communities.
That risk worries veteran marine scientist Ivor van Heerden, who has spent much of his career studying flooding and coastal protection issues in Louisiana and has worked with local environmental groups like the Basinkeeper to study restoration projects along the sediment-choked swamps of the Atchafalaya.
“It’s a ticking time bomb that no one is addressing,” he said.
Sediment from the Atchafalaya River flows into Bayou Sorrel from a distributary of the river.
Change Is Constant
Sediment has built up the Atchafalaya ever since engineers altered and increased the flow of the Mississippi River and the Red River into the region starting in the mid-1800s. The Army Corps of Engineers has been fighting floods ever since historic Mississippi River flooding across 27,000 square miles of the nation’s midsection and South in 1927, the most destructive flood in U.S. history. Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928, which authorized the Corps to construct the largest system of levees and flood control measures in the world.
In the 1960s, the Army Corps built the Old River Control Structure, a huge series of flood control gates that regulates Mississippi River flows into the Atchafalaya River. Located less than 80 miles north of Baton Rouge, the ORCS is the source of the Atchafalaya, which streams south on its 137-mile journey to the Gulf, roughly 130 miles west of the Mississippi River Delta.
Today, depending on flood conditions, a little more than a quarter of the Mississippi River now pours into the Atchafalaya River, making it a critical floodway for southern Louisiana. The Atchafalaya River carries a sediment load of about 88 million tons each year, most all of it from the Mississippi River. The Atchafalaya is the country’s fifth largest river in terms of discharge, and it carries so much sand and sediment that it’s still building land along the Louisiana coast.
Atchafalaya environmental, business and political leaders have complained about growing environmental and flooding threats for decades, but only recently have their complaints attracted statewide attention. In December 2020, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards created a task force to address the long-ignored risks, which have been exacerbated by climate change.
“The basin’s stressors are not only harming water quality and the environment but also threatening the capacity of the basin to carry floodwaters from the Mississippi and the Red Rivers safely and effectively,” Edwards noted when he announced the formation of the task force. “The basin is the nation’s largest river-basin swamp with a rich ecology, and it is past time that it receives more focused attention here in Louisiana and nationally.”
A series of file photos show the second-ever opening of the Morganza Spillway in 2011 to help control major Mississippi River flooding that spring. Top left: Workers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepare to open a bay on the structure, which will allow water from the Mississippi River to divert into the Atchafalaya Basin. Top right: Workers top a levee with sandbags near the Mississippi River. Bottom left: Buildings outside of levee protection take on floodwater in Morgan City, Louisiana, on May 12, 2011, two days before the spillway was opened. Bottom right: Water diverted from the Mississippi River spills through a bay in the Morganza Spillway on May 14, 2011. A steel, 10-ton floodgate was slowly raised for the first time since 1973, unleashing a torrent of water from the Mississippi River, away from heavily populated areas downstream. PATRICK SEMANSKY VIA AP
Major floods in 1973 and 2011 nearly overwhelmed the ORCS, which the Army Corps expanded and beefed up with more flood control measures. Hydrologists say the continuing buildup of sediment in the basin threatens its ability to absorb rising Mississippi River floodwaters. That, experts say, could threaten flooding along the Mississippi from the hugely important chemical industry corridor near Baton Rouge all the way to the critically important shipping port of New Orleans.
While Army Corps officials say they are studying the growing problem, members of the state’s Atchafalaya task force say they don’t have time for more studies. Last year the group of nearly two dozen local politicians, scientists, landowners, fishermen and environmentalists met a half-dozen times and came up with a list of general recommendations, despite unexpected obstacles in the form of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic and another damaging season of storms.
Those included Hurricane Ida, which hit Louisiana in late August and nearly made a beeline for the Atchafalaya Basin. The Category 4 storm mercifully veered east at the last moment, but it killed more than 25 people across rural areas of the state and destroyed over a hundred square miles of Barataria marshland before it roared northeast, causing dozens more deaths and billions of dollars of damage across the country.
Ida put an exclamation point on the task force’s mission, as scientists say climate change is going to make storms and flooding much worse in coming years. At the end of 2020, the group urged the state to take a more holistic approach to solving the growing environmental problems in the basin, focusing on environmental impacts that usually play second fiddle to navigation and flood control issues. It was the first time a state-sponsored entity called for restoring the north-south flow of swamp water and conserving deep-water habitats essential to the ecological health of the region.
This new approach did not sit well with large landowners worried that increased water flow could give commercial fishermen more access to what they considered their private lands. Meanwhile, environmental groups continued to complain that state and federal agencies were still doing little about monitoring the worsening quality of swamp water bottled up by oil and gas canals and spoil banks.
“The Atchafalaya is a complicated place,” says Brian Lezina, chief of planning for the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, which sponsored the task force meetings. “Big problems require big solutions. We need more federal money to get things done here.”
A Fishing Industry On The Edge
Jody Meche, center, a crawfisherman and member of the Atchafalaya task force put together by Gov. John Bel Edwards, sells his catch for the day at Huey’s Seafood in Bayou Sorrel on April 19. The task force is meant to address growing flooding risks and environmental impacts on the Atchafalaya Basin. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
Commercial fisherman Jody Meche says the risk isn’t just flooding — increased sedimentation and poor water quality could devastate his industry. As president of the Louisiana Crawfish Producers Association West, Meche says he’s watched a steady decline in the fishery since he started crawfishing as a kid with his dad and grandfather. Though the vast majority of Louisiana crawfish are now farm-raised, Meche has witnessed a steady decline in the health of the wild fishery that has sustained his family for generations.
Crawfishing in the basin with his 25-year-old son Bryce last summer, their traps pulled in barely enough to cover gas for the day. Meche is a member of the governor’s task force and says water quality has deteriorated since oil and gas pipeline canals were built, blocking the natural flow of water that nourishes the crawfish in the swampy waters.
“People come here from all over the world to eat our crawfish,” Meche said as he pulled up a trap with a dozen of the giant-clawed crustaceans crawling in the bottom. Years ago, he said, he would pull in 600 pounds of crawfish a day. Now he’s lucky to get half that. Scientists say reduced water flow caused by spoil banks and the buildup of sediment can reduce the level of oxygen crawfish depend on to reproduce and thrive. And as the water quality gets worse, Meche is worried he will have to stop fishing altogether.
Meche’s daily catch is less than half of what it once was due to declining water quality in the basin. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
“When crawfish are not doing good, everything else is not going good,” said Meche. “They are like canaries in a mine shaft.”
The basin landowners who have profited from its oil and gas operations reject the claim that the industry has wrecked the Atchafalaya. Rudy Sparks, vice president of land for Williams Inc., which holds 85,000 acres of land in the area, blames Army Corps flood control projects and government regulations for upending the natural state of the area.
The company has been active in the area since founder Frank Williams moved to Louisiana in the 1870s and bought up swampland that ultimately became some of the largest logging operations in the nation. Eventually, Sparks says, the oil and gas industry supplanted logging revenue for his company until recent decades, when oil exploration largely moved offshore and local oil drilling operations dropped dramatically.
Sparks says profits from the oil and timber days are largely done. He agrees there have been negative changes in water quality. But unlike some fishermen and environmental groups that blame the oil industry, Sparks says Army Corps projects — primarily designed to address navigation and flooding concerns — are mostly responsible for destroying water flow in the basin.
Rudy Sparks, pictured at the land office of Williams Inc. in Patterson, Louisiana, is vice president of land at the company. Williams owns tens of thousands of acres of land in the Atchafalaya Basin and leases large portions of it to oil and gas companies. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
“It’s a complicated mess. The whole forest and marsh is in severe decline,” Sparks said. “The Army Corps has done more to accelerate the decline of the basin than anyone else.”
Army Corps officials admit there are sedimentation problems in the basin, but say they are studying ways to improve the situation. Jim Lewis, director of the Army Corps’ Mississippi River Science and Technology Office, has extensive experience studying the impacts of sediment in the Atchafalaya Basin. Lewis published a 2018 report that showed over the next 50 years, sedimentation in the Atchafalaya River could boost water levels by 3 feet over levels recorded in the 2011 flood event. That flood forced the Army Corps to open part of the emergency Morganza Spillway for just the second time, releasing a deluge of water from the Mississippi River that threatened Atchafalaya communities downstream.
Lewis says the Atchafalaya is facing twin dangers from climate change: rising waters in the Gulf of Mexico and higher Mississippi River flows coming from the north. The Corps has not evaluated how miles of oil canals and spoil banks in the basin have impacted water quality, but Lewis says they “want to learn more.”
Some scientists say there is good reason to believe that a nightmare could come true. Louisiana State University professor and hydrology expert Yi-Jun Xu has studied sediment flows in the region over the past two decades, and warns that growing levels of sediment are raising river water to dangerous levels and dramatically reducing the basin’s ability to absorb floodwater.
Louisiana State University professor Yi-Jun Xu, pictured in his office in Baton Rouge on April 19, is an expert on Atchafalaya Basin water flows. He worries what would happen if massive sediment buildups in the Mississippi River were dislodged by a major hurricane. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
Xu says his main concern is a potential disaster at the ORCS, which he believes is the weakest point in the Corps’ elaborate thousand-mile flood control system. If it were ever overtopped and significantly damaged, Xu thinks the Mississippi River could take a shorter course straight down the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf, cutting off the flow of Mississippi River water to petrochemical plants and communities all the way to New Orleans that depend on it for their survival.
A 1980 paper from LSU engineering professor Raphael Kazmann and economics professor David Johnson examined the consequences of the failure of that structure and estimated it would cause up to $4 billion in damages in 1977 dollars, likely a huge underestimate since the study did not take into account the costs of rebuilding drinking water infrastructure, as well as the relocation of residents impacted by the potential disaster.
The authors said it’s not a question of if, but when. “Just when this will occur cannot be predicted: It could happen next year, during the next decade, sometime in the next 30 or 40 years,” they wrote in 1980. “But the final outcome is simply a matter of time and it is only prudent to prepare for it.”
Help From Congress, At Last?
n January, Congress at last stepped up to the plate, authorizing $2.7 billion for Louisiana’s coastal restoration and flood protection projects as part of federal hurricane relief and infrastructure bills. State officials say they plan to direct at least $78 million to basin flooding and water quality projects. But many locals say the state needs to kick in more of its own money too. Currently, Louisiana does not include the Atchafalaya Basin in its $50 billion coastal restoration plan, and it spends only about $6 million a year on projects in the region. Environmentalists and landowners alike say that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed to protect the natural resources of the area.
But the Basinkeeper group argues more money won’t solve the problem if changes aren’t made in how it’s spent. Wilson’s small organization has played an outsize role in alerting the world to destructive environmental activities in Louisiana’s secretive swamplands. He’s taken on powers big and small, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s over their purchase of commercial mulch logged from thousands of acres of majestic cypress forests, a practice that Wilson played a role in stopping a decade ago. He says state funding for basin flood control projects has been detrimental to the environment and has benefited special interest groups like landowners and the oil industry.
Dean Wilson, head of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, guides his boat through human-made canals in the basin. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
In recent years, Wilson has taken on the region’s largest landowners and fossil fuel companies, as well as state agencies and the Army Corps, which he also blames for much of the environmental decline in the region. The Basinkeeper has worked closely with environmental lawyers to fight construction of massive natural gas pipelines and pry information out of agency files that can shine a light on the degradation of the basin. In 2018, the Basinkeeper filed suit in an unsuccessful effort to stop the controversial Bayou Bridge oil pipeline that now cuts through the Atchafalaya swamp, pumping up to hundreds of thousands of barrels of Texas crude daily to Louisiana refineries. Currently, with the help of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic, the Basinkeeper is suing the Army Corps under the Freedom of Information Act to unearth data related to water quality issues.
Wilson is especially upset his organization was not included on the Atchafalaya task force, though he supports its recommendations to focus on environmental issues. But in the end, he worries little will be done to improve water quality. His group has complained about flood control projects sponsored by the Army Corps, including a levee in the basin’s Coon Trap area that failed last year and he says allowed a significant amount of silt-laden river water to pour into the swamps.
Cattle roam the levees surrounding the Atchafalaya Basin. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
The Basinkeeper is also critical of another major environmental organization active in the region, The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest conservation NGO with $1.2 billion in total revenue and support in 2020. The nonprofit operates a 5,300-acre preserve in the Atchafalaya and is studying ways to improve water quality and the environment in the region. Earlier this month, the group made public that it had purchased an additional 3,700 acres from Dow Chemical Co. to boost its conservation program in the area. The Conservancy has received support for its basin work from a variety of nonprofit, state and corporate funders, including a $1.6 million grant from Shell Pipeline Co. and financial support from Enterprise Products, a gas pipeline operator in the basin.
Conservancy officials say a major focus is improving water flow in the East Grand Lake area, which has suffered from increased sedimentation and water quality problems over the years. The project has been opposed by environmentalists, local residents and fishermen who worry it will result in the introduction of more silt- and sediment-laden water into the swamps that can add more land, which is generally supported by landowners and oil and gas industry interests.
Sediment from the Atchafalaya River flows into Bayou Sorrel from a distributary of the river. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
The Conservancy’s scientists push back on this criticism, saying they are actively monitoring the area to improve the environment. Bryan Piazza, the Conservancy’s director of freshwater and marine science in Louisiana, says the group is working as an “honest broker” with all Atchafalaya interests to improve water quality in the region despite opposition from fishermen and the Basinkeeper. “If we can get the water flowing again it will benefit everyone,” Piazza said. The controversial East Grand Lake project was paused by the state over the past year, but officials say they are now working with the Army Corps to get a permit approved.
The Conservancy’s state director, Karen Gautreaux, who sits on the governor’s task force and formerly worked for the state, agrees water quality is a growing problem in the basin. She argues that working with other interests, including the oil and gas industry, is key to finding solutions to complex environmental issues. “Being a conservationist and a landowner are not mutually exclusive,” she said.
But Wilson and fishermen like Meche who have lived and worked in the Atchafalaya for decades, argue that projects like East Grand Lake are working against the best interests of the swamp. Van Heerden, the scientist who has worked with the Basinkeeper, says his analysis shows the proposed project on Conservancy land will end up “making things worse.” And in Wilson’s view, the oil industry and landowners are getting what they want.
“They are just filling in the swamp,” said Wilson.
While virtually everyone agrees that water quality is a problem in the Atchafalaya, major landowners like Williams Inc.’s Sparks are “uncomfortable” with state task force recommendations they say would create deeper water flow in some areas and promote public fishing access to their private lands, something fishing groups deny. But Sparks says if nothing is done to fight increasing sedimentation in the basin, river bottoms and water levels will keep rising, including in the grandest river of all, the Mississippi.
The LSU Center for River Studies in Baton Rouge is home of the Lower Mississippi River Physical Model, a collaboration with the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. The model helps run sediment and flood projection experiments to better understand the effects of altering the delta and climate change. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
Changing Course?
Many experts agree the Mississippi River is overdue to change course, as it has naturally done over eons of time. Scientists say no matter what we do to try to contain the Mississippi, it will always fight to change its path as sediment builds up. The great nonfiction writer John McPhee, who wrote extensively about the region, described the Mississippi River’s changing history as “a pianist playing with one hand — frequently and radically changing course, surging over the left or the right bank to go off in new directions.”
What concerns Xu and others even more is that climate change and growing sedimentation of the riverbeds is creating a perfect storm that will be hard to stop. Xu worries that a major hurricane the size of Hurricane Katrina or Harvey will hit the Mississippi area northwest of New Orleans.
Xu and his graduate students at LSU have collected water samples from the Atchafalaya Basin and other rivers. BRYAN TARNOWSKI FOR HUFFPOST
That, he says, could dislodge a 500 million-ton slug of built-up river sediment, creating floodwaters that could overwhelm the ORCS. That would allow the river to seek a path down the Atchafalaya, destroying towns, levees and swamplands in its raging rampage to the Gulf. “We are underestimating the seriousness of the situation,” Xu says. “Many people in the Corps are engineers who think an engineering approach can keep this from happening … but we can’t fight that massive amount of sediment moving in such a short period of time.”
Army Corps experts disagree with these dire predictions. While they acknowledge that climate change is driving increased rainfall and more powerful storms in the area, they say there have been major improvements made in the ORCS and the levee system since it was significantly damaged in a major 1973 flood. The Corps continues to closely monitor and model flooding emergencies in the region, and officials are confident they can handle whatever threats Mother Nature throws at them.
A New Reality
John Day, an LSU emeritus professor of marine sciences, says it’s likely the Mississippi will change course, though he’s not sure where. Both Day and other scientists say it’s time to transition our thinking from restoring nature to adapting to it, which will require protecting certain communities over others.
“We need to protect the infrastructure of our fisheries,” said Day.
That’s something many people in the Atchafalaya Basin would support. Henderson Mayor Sherbin Collette grew up in a family of fishermen. He’s been mayor of Henderson for 17 years and has helped make the small town prosperous as the “Gateway to the Atchafalaya,” which features a dinosaur park and casino that attracts visitors off busy I-10. More theme parks are being planned, and the town’s bank account is $3 million in the green, the mayor says. But he worries that may not last for long as the threat of flooding increases.
Atchafalaya Basin
“I remember when the Atchafalaya Basin was a gem,” he said. “Now it’s full of stagnant water and stinks to high heaven. … They ruined the basin because of oil.”
But it’s the increasing storms and hurricanes that worry him the most. Collette says Henderson has been lucky over the past few years, but that luck won’t always hold. “Two-thirds of the U.S. drains down here,” he said. “If you think it’s bad now, just wait.”
One of the ironies of the Atchafalaya Basin is that some people who live near the delta on the Gulf may be more secure from flooding than others who live farther away from the coast. That’s because the sediment-laden Atchafalaya River is building land in the delta, which is growing about a square mile per year on average.
LSU’s Robert Twilley, a veteran coastal researcher and the longtime director of the Louisiana Sea Grant program until last year, has spent much of his career researching the coastal zone of the Atchafalaya Basin. He says the delta is of special interest to researchers around the world because it’s building land in the face of rising seas, which Twilley expects to continue for decades barring a catastrophic flooding event.
Eventually, though, rising seas will overcome the sedimentation effects of the river. At that point, he said, “all bets are off.”
But if the Mississippi River ever does change course down the Atchafalaya, even sea level rise would be no match for Old Man River, Twilley said. “It would make one hell of a delta.”
Dolphins killed during Ida’s storm surge are a reminder of how vulnerable Louisiana’s marine life is to climate change. And locals worry a controversial river diversion project to increase the state’s marshland could make things even worse.
Days after Hurricane Ida roared through coastal Louisiana, sending a 12-foot storm surge rushing across the marshlands south of New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish Fire Department Capt. Kevin Coleman was driving on a coastal road trying to reach his isolated fire station near Myrtle Grove, Louisiana.
As he drove toward Barataria Bay, he saw in the distance what looked like black plastic garbage bags littering the road. But as he drove closer his curiosity turned to horror. “What the hell,” he said to himself as he slammed on the brakes. Scattered along the road were the remains of four dead bottlenose dolphins, lying on the drying asphalt with mouths agape, a decaying pile of flesh that revealed their agonizing deaths.
Coleman jumped out of his vehicle and took a few pictures to capture the morbid moment he had just witnessed. The fire department captain didn’t have much time to reflect on what he had seen, but later he couldn’t shake the thought of what might be in store for the region’s dolphins. He says he worries that the future is not a bright one for the dolphins, as well as the oysters, shrimp, and salt-water fish that make the bay one of the most productive in the nation.
That’s because, he says, about six miles from where he found the dolphins dead in the middle of the road, the state of Louisiana plans to build an unprecedented multi-billion river diversion project. The goal is to build up marshland in Barataria Bay in order to mitigate coastal erosion. The plan is currently under federal environmental review.
The project’s supporters, including major environmental nonprofits like the Environmental Defense Fund, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Audubon Society, say large river diversions are the most effective way to send land-building sediment streaming into the bayou from the Mississippi River to fight land subsidence and sea-level rise. Losing land at an alarming rate, Louisiana is one of the states most threatened by the impacts of climate change in the U.S.
The diversion project is part of a 50-year coastal restoration plan by the state, boosted by major funding from the Walton Family Foundation, which has supported a multi-million dollar PR and media campaign to promote the plan. The foundation also has funded local media coastal reporting efforts, which, along with national media stories, has largely been positive about the state’s diversion plan.
But that’s not how some locals and other marine mammal experts see it. The massive river diversions planned for Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes has run into a buzzsaw of opposition, as local fishing communities worry that the diversions will pour polluted Mississippi River water into the bay. The fear is that upstream chemicals, pesticides, and other toxins will change the salinity levels of the water and destroy one of the most productive fisheries in the country.
A study earlier this year found that the Barataria Bay diversion project could result in local dolphin populations becoming “functionally extinct.”
But in 2018 a Congressional lobbying effort successfully managed to insert an exemption to remove protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act in order to allow the project to move forward.
Dolphin expert Moby Solangi, president and executive director of the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, Mississippi, says finding four stranded dolphins on a road is unusual, but it’s not surprising given that climate change is contributing to bigger and more destructive storms. “The climate predictions of increased hurricanes and tropical storms in the region, and the proposed diversion of polluted Mississippi River in the Louisiana estuaries, will have a devastating effect on dolphins, turtles, fish and shellfish,” Solangi said.
Solangi and other marine mammal experts say dolphins are territorial and will not move, even if their habitat is threatened, and they will suffer deadly skin lesions disease caused by the planned massive inflows of river water.
Dolphin populations are already stressed in the area, having been severely damaged by the historic BP oil disaster in 2010, which still impacts the dolphin populations in Barataria Bay today. Officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that deadly dolphin strandings in Texas, western Louisiana, and coastal Florida are on the rise this year as well. Still, they haven’t approached the dangerous 2019 levels when record flooding pumped river runoff into the Gulf and contributed to the death of more than 300 hundred dolphins. Scientists say impacts of red tide and the toxic impacts of yearly “dead zones” caused by inflows of toxins and oxygen-killing algal blooms may be contributing too.
Meanwhile, Louisiana faces challenges to find all the dolphins that may be dying in its marshes, a major task considering the state essentially abandoned its stranding effort, a program to identify and recover marine mammals in distress, in the years following the 2010 BP disaster. Experts say many dolphins likely have died unidentified.
Gabriella Harlamert, coordinator of the Audubon Nature Institute’s wildlife stranding network, says the organization is trying to build up its resources, and that it now has its first boat on order. She says they were able to help rescue seven dolphins last year after Hurricane Laura slammed into the Louisiana coast, and they participated in a recent multi-agency rescue of a young dolphin trapped in Ida’s floodwaters in Slidell, Louisiana.
But Harlamert was too late to help save the four dolphins recently found in Plaquemines. Her small team responded to the stranding report, but she says the animals were too decomposed to do a proper necropsy. “I’ve never gotten dolphins like this that were so fragmented,” she says. She blames storm surge for trapping the animals, who likely got caught in a containment area by the road as the surging water rushed back into the bay.
Public officials, however, like Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser, former president of Plaquemines Parish during the BP oil disaster, say the dolphins killed during Hurricane Ida are symbolic of a state’s coastal restoration plan gone awry.
Nungesser, who is in charge of Louisiana’s seafood promotion board, has made opposing the massive river diversion projects central to his likely run for governor in 2023. He said earlier this year that the future of Louisiana lies in protecting its fisheries, not the oil and gas industry, which he famously said “was going down.” He argues that the state should be focusing on more immediate, short-term projects they know work, such as more dredging and berms to help land areas which act as a buffer between storm surges and the coastline, instead of working on 50-year programs when it’s challenging to predict that far into the future.
“The dolphins on that road is a wake-up call,” Nungesser told Desmog. “How do they think they can dump all this polluted river water in there and not kill everything?”
Political leaders and residents in coastal areas that will be impacted by these diversions largely agree with the Lt. Governor. They say there are other ways to try to build coastal land that won’t destroy the fisheries in the process.
Dredging, for instance, also works to build land — but requires constant maintenance. The state says diversions can build land naturally. The question for many is: at what cost? Is it worth impacting dolphin populations and jeopardizing the fisheries? The state says it will compensate local communities for their losses, but locals say that is impossible. They say it will kill their livelihoods.
“There are more than two thousand dolphins in this area,” says Coleman. “The diversions will kill them … we need to stick with dredging.”
Cover crops have been growing in popularity in recent years as a method of improving soil health, saving money, and both adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change.
Government programs and private carbon credit programs are supporting farmers in planting cover crops after harvesting their cash crops, instead of leaving fields fallow. Many farmers find this saves them money in the form of reduced pesticide use, provides better soil for their cash crops and makes their fields resilient to extreme flooding.
Linus Rothermich has been farming mostly corn and soy in central Missouri’s Callaway County since the 1980s, but in recent years, heavy rains and bouts of extreme weather forced him to think differently about how to make his 900-acre farm more efficient. So, in an effort to address the worsening soil erosion that was damaging his fields, Rothermich started experimenting with no-till agriculture and cover crops. He planted a diverse mix of cover crops like rye and winter hairy vetch immediately after harvesting his main crops, allowing the cover crops to grow in fields that normally would be plowed up and then left fallow.
The results over just a few years have been amazing, Rothermich reports. Runoff and soil erosion have reduced drastically as the cover crops absorbed more moisture and held the soil in place. He soon noticed spots on his farm where the soil had improved markedly. Last summer, an agronomist who inspected his fields told him that based on his inspection of dozens of farms, he has the best soil in central Missouri. “That kind of made me sit up and go, ‘Okay, we’re making a difference,’” Rothermich says.
Experts say Rothermich’s experience is similar to that of many farmers in the Show Me State, with cover crops quickly gaining traction as a way to reduce runoff of farm chemicals and improve soil health. Research shows that cover crops deter weeds, control pests, increase biodiversity in the fields and bolster the ability of soil to absorb water, allowing farmers to reduce the amounts of pesticides and fertilizers they must purchase and apply to their crops.
That’s a helpful incentive for farmers who are squeezed by increasing fuel costs and extreme weather events. The amount of agricultural land employing cover crops has jumped 50% in a five-year period in the U.S., according to the 2017 Census of Agriculture report, as farmers realized the benefits of no-till and cover crop methods — which were popular with previous farming generations — and took advantage of government programs supporting this transition. Cover crops are also both an adaptation to climate change, and a way of slowing it — or mitigating its effects.
Rob Myers, director of the Center for Regenerative Agriculture at the University of Missouri, is right in the middle of this resurgence. The new center is working with government agencies, nonprofits and corporate partners to develop training programs for farmers across the state to increase the use of cover crops and sustainable agriculture technologies. Myers says there are currently about a million acres of farmland in Missouri under cover crop management, a number that he and other U.S. Department of Agriculture experts believe will expand substantially.
Extreme heat is increasingly a serious public health issue in many parts of the world, including in Jackson, Mississippi.
2°C Mississippi, a Jackson-based climate change organization, is collaborating with city leaders, community members and other partners to pinpoint high-priority areas for new cooling centers and other heat mitigation and response measures. The group is also working with local schools on climate change curriculum.
Dominika Parry started her journey far from Jackson, Mississippi. Born in Poland, she earned her doctorate in environmental economics at Yale, moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and then relocated to Jackson a decade ago when her husband took a job at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
Jackson, “The City With Soul,” is a place filled with history and culture, and has a vibrant art and music scene. It also has been subject to the country’s most extreme racial segregation, discrimination and violence, as well as white flight to the now affluent suburbs. This has led to one of the highest rates of poverty in the country and increased vulnerability to climate change-related disasters and public health impacts. As an economist deeply worried about the health impacts of a rapidly warming climate, Parry found that the science of climate change was significantly politicized in Mississippi. In some cases there was fear about bringing up the topic and in others a lack of awareness, stemming in part from attempts to block or confuse teachingin public schools about the reality and human causes of climate change, and from the many pressing needs absorbing people’s attention, including aging infrastructure like city water pipes.
But Parry soon found local allies who were also worried about and taking action on health and climate impacts, including in the political circles of Jackson, where a new mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, won office based on a progressive platform of racial justice. He is a lawyer and the son of the late mayor and civil rights lawyer Chokwe Lumumba and his wife, Nubia Lumumba, both of whom were very influential in state politics and beyond.
Lumumba campaigned in 2017 on bringing improvements for the underserved and fixing the streets and broken sewer systems in a city strapped for cash. Recently, he added addressing climate change to his list of priorities.
“Extreme heat is not an equal opportunity threat,” Mayor Lumumba said at one of his public weekly briefings in February 2021. “It disproportionately affects people of color, young children, the elderly, socially isolated individuals and people with chronic health conditions or limited mobility.”
On the Banks of the Mississippi, Clean Energy Rises in the Heartland
As pastor of the New Northside Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, the Rev. Rodrick Burton has championed many causes for his church members. These include fighting violent crime to helping people struggling to pay their bills. But one cause stands out for the north St. Louis pastor: promoting clean and affordable renewable energy. Low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately harmed by air pollution from burning fossil fuels and by the health risks of climate change.
As someone with family members who suffer from asthma, Rev. Burton long considered the advantages of solar energy, which does not produce air pollution or greenhouse gases. Six years ago, he took advantage of a state subsidy program that allowed him to install solar panels on his church and community center, which he says saves his congregation $3,000 a year in utility bills. That’s when Rev. Burton really got religion about solar energy.
“Let me be clear — climate change is a civil rights issue,” Rev. Burton wrote in an op-ed at the time. “ Low-income communities and communities of color — like the one I serve — are disproportionately harmed by the air pollution from coal-fired power plants, as well as by the heat and health risks due to climate change.”
He joined with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club that wanted to help share his message with a national audience, and he traveled to energy conferences around the country. In 2019, he hosted a summit in St. Louis along with other leaders from the Green the Churchmovement, a national organization of church leaders focused on environmental justice concerns. Groups like Washington University’s sustainability program helped support the conference. Rev. Burton began thinking up even bigger projects, ones that could provide jobs for his congregants and potentially transform abandoned areas of the city.
While solar installations in disadvantaged urban areas of St. Louis are still rare, across the Mississippi River in Illinois, solar is booming thanks to more supportive energy policies, according to solar installers. Last year, the EPA reached a consent decree in a major Superfund case in East St. Louis that included the construction of solar panels on contaminated property.
“St. Louis has many vacant properties,” Rev. Burton says. “We could make whole areas into solar farms. … Who wants to live next to an abandoned building? We could repurpose the land to create more sustainability projects.”
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