Environment

By Eileen Fleming

New Orleans, La. – Mayors on Landrieu's tour on a hot June afternoon watched as scores of boats attacked the spill in the hardest-hit area of wetlands. Miles of white and orange boom outlined the craggy shoreline, some parts coated in oil.
Now, the boom is gone. So are the shoreline clean-up crews. But the oil's still there. It quickly seeps onto shoes in only a few steps on the dying grass.

Those cannon sounds are made by propane guns to keep birds from landing in the sludge.

By Eileen Fleming

New Orleans, La. – Marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia says samples her team recovered from the Gulf floor are unique because they were taken before and after the well blowout. She traveled down to the seafloor around the Macondo well in December in a submersible vessel called the Alvin. She searched for creatures she'd seen before the spill, including the worm-like sea cucumber.

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming

New Orleans, La. – Communities from Florida to Texas will be asked over the next 18 months about what they want their regions to look like in the future, and how that can be accomplished. At a Plaquemines Parish news conference, foundation chairman King Milling says a coordinated plan must be devised to make the coast resilient to storms, rising seas and disasters, like the BP oil spill.

By Eileen Fleming

By Eileen Fleming

New Orleans, La. – The director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is telling oil industry representatives meeting at the Baker Institute at Rice University that new regulations aren't holding up offshore operations. Michael Bromwich says there are still unanswered questions about containing an accident.

By Eileen Fleming

New Orleans, La. – Speakers at the public hearing held in the Lower Ninth Ward warned that the plan for freshwater diversion would cause the same damage as the MR-GO, which is now closed off. Some asked for more time to review long-term damage from the oil spill. Corps spokesman Greg Miller says another month may be granted.