Recent editorials from Louisiana newspapers:
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Jan. 2
The Advocate of Baton Rouge on a book recently published by LSU Press:
The so-called “traditional media” has been a whipping boy this year, blamed for evils large and small.
Are journalists perfect? Far from it. But a new book just published by LSU Press serves as a timely reminder of the valuable role that skilled reporters can play in uncovering wrongs and advancing the cause of justice.
“Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s” recounts the research of Stanley Nelson into atrocities of the Jim Crow era, including the 1964 murder of Frank Morris, an African American shoe shop owner in Ferriday.
Nelson, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, works for the Concordia Sentinel, Ferriday’s small community newspaper. Morris was burned to death when two Klansmen threw gasoline into his shoe repair shop and set it on fire. The case languished for years, until the U.S. Department of Justice reopened an investigation in 2007.
Nelson decided to look into the case, too. He discovered, much to his surprise, that not a single representative of any law enforcement agency had ever talked to the Morris family about his death.
“I would go on to write 190 articles over seven years,” Nelson tells readers. “There would be other cold cases, including some in Mississippi that had a Concordia connection. Not everyone was happy about my reporting. There were nasty calls and ugly letters and emails. The newspaper office was broken into. Two straight mornings before dawn, while I was making my daily walk, a pickup emerged from the distance and flushed me off the road. Through the years, I interviewed aging Klansmen and witnesses in many places, including cornfields, cemeteries, churchyards, hospitals, and hotel rooms. I was cursed often but received decently by most.”
As Nelson reminds readers, when public servants refuse to serve, a free press can be key in holding them accountable. “The cases I have discussed in this book were cases that should have been investigated by local officials,” he writes. “For the past fifty years, every law enforcement official or lawyer - male or female, black or white - in every town, parish, or county where these murders occurred took an oath to enforce the law. Yet the vast majority didn’t lift a finger to solve these crimes. In most of these murders, the federal government had no jurisdiction, but without the FBI and the Department of Justice nothing would have been done.
“Every community and every citizen bears the ultimate responsibility of justice, including me and including you,” Nelson adds. “After half a century, who is to blame for the failure of justice in cases like these? We all are.”
To learn more about the resolution of the Frank Morris murder and other Klan-related crimes, read Nelson’s book. It’s compelling proof that traditional media is still doing good work, even when it involves personal risk.
Online: https://www.theadvocate.com/
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Jan. 3
The Courier of Houma on federal funding to protect against bad weather:
Greetings to our neighbors in the River Parishes. They are among the latest waiting in line for hundreds of millions of dollars to help protect their community against flooding and storm surges.
A story by the Baton Rouge Advocate, reprinted with permission in Tuesday’s Courier and Daily Comet, says President Barack Obama has authorized a $744 million project that residents along the Mississippi River’s east bank say aims to protect them against floodwaters from Lake Pontchartrain. The 18-mile string of levees would run roughly parallel to Interstate 10 from the Bonnet Carre Spillway in St. Charles Parish to the Hope Canal in St. John the Baptist Parish. According to the news report, the project, more than 40 years in the making, has taken on a “new urgency” after the inundations brought by Hurricane Isaac in 2012. River Parishes officials are seeking 65 percent from the federal government, with the rest coming from local taxpayers.
All of this should sound familiar to anyone who has paid attention to Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes’ efforts to protect themselves from inundation by the Gulf of Mexico. Local officials have tried since the 1990s to persuade Congress to pay for the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane-protection system. Tired of waiting, the local levee district persuaded residents to pass two sales taxes to pay for interim levees — now well under way - in hopes of later securing the money, estimated at at least $10.8 billion, from the federal government to upgrade the system to protect against hurricanes.
The “new urgency” for Morganza came after Hurricane Rita flooded an estimated 10,000 homes in Terrebonne, roughly one of every four. Rita skirted the coast, its center coming no more than about 200 miles from the parishes’ shores. What would happen if that would have been a direct hit?
Local officials, tired of inaction by Congress and several presidents, along with bureaucratic delays by the Army Corps of Engineers, persuaded Terrebonne residents to pass two sales taxes to start turning dirt on Morganza. However, while the sense of “urgency” remains at the local level, it is not shared by President Obama and the current Congress. It was the same for presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
It was much the same in south Lafourche, where residents years ago voted to tax themselves to build a ring levee that is the sole reason places like Cut Off, Golden Meadow, Larose and Galliano still exist, at least above water.
So, River Parishes, welcome to the club. Our membership has been expanding as coastal communities face the threat of rising seas brought about by climate change, sinking land and the increasing threats they pose for hurricanes and flooding from rainfall.
Morganza has been authorized too - twice. Don’t count on Congress following up with the cash. It hasn’t worked for Terrebonne and Lafourche, and the same congressional delegation that so far hasn’t gotten the job done for us is working for you. Heck, every coastal Louisiana parish would like the feds to put up the cash to protect them from becoming the next Atlantis. So would New York, Miami, Boston and other coastal metropolises that have a lot more people and, as a result, more clout in Congress.
We wish it were different, but so far, experience tells us that if you want to protect your community from storms, the people who live there are going to have to put up the vast majority of the cash and settle for whatever protection they can afford.
Online: https://www.houmatoday.com/
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Jan. 4
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans on plans for Lake Pontchartrain:
Fifty years after gates first were recommended to block storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain, the project could be built as part of Louisiana’s 50-year coastal master plan. The 2017 update to the master plan, which was released Tuesday (Jan. 3), includes gates at the Rigolets and Chef Menteur passes. The revised plan also includes completion of U-shaped levees around Slidell to protect the city from 100-year storms. Parts of St. Tammany would be targeted for risk reduction work such as flood-proofing properties, elevating homes where flooding could reach 3 to 14 feet and buying out homeowners in areas with greater risk of flooding.
The updated master plan also includes wetland restoration work along Lake Pontchartrain to lessen the height of surge.
The combination of the gates and levees would be the most significant steps yet to reduce flooding from storm surge on the north shore. It is essential to better protect those communities, which are increasingly vulnerable to surge.
Having gates at the passes could cut out about one-third of the projected $3.2 billion average annual damage caused by surge from a 100-year storm, the state’s review team found.
The two gates would cost $2.4 billion to build, but would reduce damages to communities around Lake Pontchartrain by an estimated $1.2 billion per year. About half of that savings - $620 million - would come in St. Tammany Parish. Another $292 million would be saved in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish and $321 million in other parishes along the lake, according to state estimates.
Those are significant savings, and the project also should ease the worry of flooding for tens of thousands of residents.
The gates, which would be moved into place before storms, are not a perfect solution. They could pose modest risk for additional flooding damage in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, but the plan as written minimizes that possibility.
The state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority staff settled on the gates because other options would push too much additional surge toward the Mississippi Gulf Coast and into St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. Limiting that side effect could make it easier to get approval for the project.
The authority’s board and the Legislature must approve the revised plan, which was last updated in 2012. The state also plans to ask the Army Corps of Engineers to seek congressional authorization for the gates as a hurricane risk reduction project. That would open the way for federal funding.
As with the entire $50 billion master plan, funding for the gates will be a challenge.
Money from the BP settlement will be used to fast-track part of the 50-year plan, but the gates would be funded separately. The state also is counting on oil and gas revenue-sharing royalties promised to Louisiana by Congress to help with costs. That won’t be enough to cover everything, though.
The idea of blocking storm surge from flowing into Lake Pontchartrain at the Rigolets goes back decades. The Corps of Engineers proposed building a barrier in the 1960s and ’70s and had designs ready. But the project was derailed after an environmental group and St. Tammany Parish leaders sued, and the corps decided the barrier was too expensive.
Since then, coastal erosion has increased the risk from storm surge. In 2012, Hurricane Isaac inundated parts of St. Tammany with 13-foot floodwaters and caused widespread flooding in the River Parishes.
Earlier versions of the state’s master plan included the lake gates as a possibility. Now the study phase is done, and the 2017 update puts them in line to be built. That is good news for residents who worry about Lake Pontchartrain washing into their homes and businesses during a hurricane or tropical storm.
Online: https://www.nola.com/
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