Scott Eustis

Giving the plants a lift: Floating Grasses in Bayou St JohnMonths ago, I assisted Caitlin Reilly of LSU AgCenter with an experimental installation of Vallisneria americana (“wild celery” or “tape-grass” ) in Bayou St John. The plantsand the were gifted to the bayou From Dr. Poirrier’s lab at the University of New Orleans. Because the […]

Crawfishing is drying up:Illegal roads are choking the bayous of the Atchafalaya BasinDean Wilson of Atchafalaya Basinkeeper invited us to take a low-water tour with Jody Meche of the Louisiana Crawfish Producer’s Association West, to see the challenges healthy wetlands face in their neck of the woods. Illegal access roads are damming up the bayous

Jean Lafitte National Park and EPA lead the way to healing oil injuries to our coastal marshesTo heal a patient, first stop the bleeding. After decades of Coastal Restoration, Louisiana still has not applied the pressure needed to restore the most obvious damage to its marshes. Over the decades, these open wounds have cost the

The last of the Pearl River Sturgeon:: Temple-Inland’s decades of damage in a matter of daysThe following has been submitted to the Louisiana Senate Environmental Quality Committee as public testimony.Temple-Inland’s release of black liquor has killed much life in the Pearl River. [We’ve written about it before, and we’re sure to write about it again.]

People of the Pearl River are feeling their stomachs drop at news of the latest “fish kill” which seems more of a “River Kill.” Temple-Inland’s “slug” of “black liquor” -an untreated mash of tannins, lye, soaps, sulfuric and other unknown compounds that is the regular waste of the pulping process Temple-Inland pumped their noxious slug

When Blue Water turns all the colors of the RainbowA while back, Jonathan Henderson and I were graciously invited to fly with Bonny Schumaker and On Wings of Care, in order to scope for whale sharks, to document an ongoing oil release from one of the 27,000 abandoned wells in the Gulf, and to check

Given the ongoing BP disaster, the ever-present unaccountable leaks from the Ocean Saratoga and other rusting rigs and pipes, the legacy of Oil and Gas destruction upon the Mississippi River Delta, and our future made unlikelier by a warming, rising sea, People of the Gulf demand an independent voice to hold the oil industry accountable.What

The NRDA Early Restoration Project Selection is Underway -Which Candidates Will Make the Cut?Our natural resource trustees are drafting a restoration plan for the Gulf Coast that will be paid for by BP and the other polluters through the Natural Resources Damages Assessment (NRDA) process. Many projects have been submitted, and many are posted online

Oil, spattered across our Front Lines of Defense Cathy Norman, Secretary Treasurer of the Edward Wisner Donation, speaks to me about the presence and persistence of oil on Fourchon Beach and throughout the Wisner donation. The sandstone Cathy holds are mottled with brown, degraded oil from the BP disaster.On Tuesday Jonathan and I traveled to

As the old curse goes, we are living in interesting times. While we in the Gulf deal daily with the continuing impacts of the BP oil drilling disaster, there have been devastating tornadoes in Alabama; and now the flooding of the Ohio River Valley–followed by flooding of the Lower Mississippi. The Army Corps has opened