Tagged: Department of Natural Resources

ASSUMPTION PARISH — A top geologist at the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources says bubbling gas in bayous in Assumption Parish may be connected to a salt dome deep underground.

The Advocate reports (http://bit.ly/LsftDK) that Madhurendu Kumar, director of DNR's geological oil and gas division, told residents last week that gas that has collected in pockets of a fault along the Napoleonville Dome could be being released naturally.

The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources says an agreement with the St. Martin Parish School Board has been hammered out to save 640 acres of cypress and hardwood forest under threat of being logged in the Atchafalaya basin.

The school board had allowed the tract to be logged but environmental groups recently intervened and threatened to sue. The lawsuit prompted DNR's conservation plan, according to Dean Wilson, the head of the Atchafalaya Basinkeeper.

Environmentalists oppose cypress logging in south Louisiana because the trees are so hard to grow back.