Blogging for a Healthy Gulf

The rivers of Louisiana are intricately connected to our unique and valuable wetland forests. You may recognize some of these iconic southern riverine landscapes, such as cypress-tupelo dominated swamps.

Wetland forests provide effective shelter from floods and storms, a filter for safe clean water, and are an integral part of the Gulf’s cultural and natural heritage. Streams cooled by these non-coastal forests provide productive habitats for a variety of fish and wildlife species, including those that are not found anywhere else on the planet, like the inflated heelsplitter mussel and the broadstripe topminnow.

Decades of unregulated sand and gravel mining has degraded Louisiana's iconic rivers and the surrounding wetland forests. In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, residential development has rapidly increased in these river basins. As a result, large swaths...

The on-again, off-again saga of drilling off the Florida coast is…on again. Well, apparently it was never really off. 

Just a few days after the Trump administration proposed opening nearly the entire U.S. coast to drilling, including the long off-limits eastern Gulf of Mexico off Florida, there came a hasty announcement from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.  After meeting briefly with Florida governor Rick Scott, Zinke announced that there would be no drilling off Florida. 

Huh? 

At first that seemed like good news, but it’s also true that major decisions such as where to allow drilling are hugely complex and take months and years to outline. The political theatre of Sec. Zinke’s announcement was replaced a few days later by a reality-check from the director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, who said that Zinke’s announcement is not official policy and that the five year leasing plan—including drilling off FL—is...

Last week, the Trump administration released a plan to open up nearly all U.S. water to oil and gas drilling. This news came on the heels of an announcement that Trump is rolling back protections, such as portions of the “well-control rule,” which were enacted to fix the problems that led to the BP drilling disaster.

Opening new areas to drilling while rolling back vital protections may make big oil happy, but it’s bad news for our coastal communities, the environment, and offshore workers. Take action to protect our coasts and people.

8 years ago, we experienced the largest oil drilling disaster in United States history. 11 offshore workers lost their lives, hundreds of millions of gallons of oil were spilled by BP, millions of animals were killed and people from all walks of life felt the economic fallout. We are still living with the consequences of that disaster....

Last week the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources met to mark up the bills reauthorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal law that manages our nation’s fisheries. “Marking up” is the process in which members of the committee debate, amend, and rewrite proposed legislation before it goes to the House floor to be debated and voted upon. 

One little noticed amendment that the Committee passed was introduced by Representative Garret Graves of Louisiana. That amendment would exempt certain activities in Louisiana from the requirements of mitigating impacts to fisheries. 

During the hearing, Graves explained that he introduced the amendment because National Marine Fisheries Services is designating lands that have been eroded and are now water as Essential Fish Habitat, thus requiring mitigation for impacts to the fisheries for coastal wetland restoration activities. 

Rep. Jared...