Delaney Dryfoos (The Lens)

Tulane University graduate student Augustine Nwokoye removes a water sample from the PS 200 isokinetic sediment sampler in the Lower Mississippi River Delta on Wednesday, April 23, 2025.

Mississippi River loses most of its sediment—and land building ability—before reaching the Gulf

New research shows that typically, less than 10% of land-building alluvium reaches the Bird’s Foot Delta region, the southernmost reach of the river, where it meets the Gulf.

Alisha Renfro, coastal scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, takes a sediment core sample from Quarantine Bay during a period of high water. New research shows that Neptune Pass is building new land with material from the Mississippi River.

Coastal Desk

Through a new Mississippi River channel, Mother Nature shows the land-building power of sediment diversions

Delaney Dryfoos (The Lens)

As the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion flounders amid politics, some scientists say that doubts about its effectiveness can be addressed by Neptune Pass, which branched off the Mississippi on its own and is creating the largest new delta in North America.

A liquefied natural gas tanker docks at Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass LNG, an export facility that started operating last year on the coast of Cameron Parish, Louisiana.

Coastal Desk

LNG terminals threaten to push Calcasieu River pollution ‘beyond repair’

Delaney Dryfoos (The Lens)

The shrimp stopped coming up the Calcasieu River after Venture Global built its Liquified Natural Gas terminal. The river’s ongoing pollution, on top of decades of hazardous waste dumping, earned the Calcasieu the #9 slot on American Rivers’ 2025 list of most endangered rivers.

The Mississippi River rises to flood stage surrounding a highway outside Memphis, Tennessee in 2016. Memphis is again flooding this week after heavy rains.

Coastal Desk

Mississippi River named the most endangered of 2025 by non-profit American Rivers

Madeline Heim (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

The Mississippi River is the nation’s most endangered river, a national conservation group says, because of federal plans to cut flood relief programs as severe weather threats grow.

Floodplain forests like these, along the Mississippi River outside Lansing, Iowa, on August 1, 2024, provide crucial habitat and flood protection.

Coastal Desk

Latest federal Water Resources Development Act addresses climate extremes and flooding along the Mississippi River

Madeline Heim (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

Flood control along the Mississippi River is a central piece of a newly passed federal law — work that advocates believe is critical as the river basin sees more frequent and severe extreme weather events due to climate change.

The Maurepas Swamp has been dying for nearly 100 years, because levees have blocked it from the Mississippi River, depriving the swamp’s bald cypress and water tupelo trees of the river’s nutrients, oxygen and freshwater flow.

Coastal Desk

Maurepas Swamp’s upcoming reintroduction to the Mississippi River

Delaney Dryfoos (The Lens)

Reconnecting the dying swamp to fresh river water is vital for the health of the swamp’s cypress-tupelo forest, which minimizes storm surge damage for communities in St. John the Baptist, St. James, Ascension and Livingston Parishes.

Workers shore up a temporary levee across Main Street in Grafton, IL on May 29, 2019. The Mississippi River reached its second highest crest ever at 35.17 ft 9 days later.

Coastal Desk

Mississippi River towns pilot new insurance model to help with disaster response

Delaney Dryfoos (The Lens)

Mayors along the Mississippi River have watched for years as intensifying rain storms and flooding wreak havoc on their communities.

Holy Cross resident Lindsay Edwards stands amid the long-neglected railroad tracks leading out from the Alabo Street Wharf.

Coastal Desk

Port of New Orleans plans grain terminal in the Lower 9: 'It’s not going to be good for us'

Eva Tesfaye

The Port of New Orleans plans to “revitalize” the Alabo Street Wharf into a terminal for organic grain. Neighbors in Holy Cross are concerned about grain dust, pests, rodents and a steady line of railcars passing right outside their doors.

Public Health

Lead pipes, another New Orleans legacy

Delaney Dryfoos (The Lens)

As the federal government announces a rule to eliminate all lead pipes within the next decade, tests by the Water Collaborative found lead within drinking water at 88% of New Orleans homes tested.

River Parish homes with industrial smokestacks as their backdrop. Over generations, racially discriminatory zoning laws have transformed majority-Black communities into what is now known as Cancer Alley, say lawyers for residents of St. James Parish, who have filed suit against the Parish Council.

Coastal Desk

The majority-Black districts that became Cancer Alley

Delaney Dryfoos (The Lens)

Lifelong residents of St. James Parish will speak in federal court on Monday about how parish officials and ordinances have, for generations, explicitly directed industrial plants into predominantly Black neighborhoods.