Restoration Program Cleans Up Abandoned LA Wells

July 24, 2010 - Over the past fiscal year, the state's Oilfield Site Restoration Program has closed and erased from sight 177 orphaned wells and related production equipment in Caddo, Union, DeSoto, St. Martin, Assumption and Terrebonne parishes.

But there's an untold number of other potentially hazardous sites around the state waiting to be cleaned up after oil and gas exploration and production companies walked away, leaving behind wells, production facilities, rusty pipes and tank batteries.

Kjel Brothen, director of the program under the state Department of Natural Resources' Office of Conservation, said the state identifies and prioritizes as many sites as it can each year with the $4 million that's paid into a fund by companies producing oil and gas in the state.

An orphan well or site is one that the company responsible for it cannot be located or legally determined. If the responsible party is identified, the state seeks reimbursement for all costs.

Many of the sites are away from residential areas, Brothen said, but some are in neighborhoods.

"Typically, homeowners are very happy to get equipment out of their backyards," he said.

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EPA Investigates Contamination in Louisiana Neighborhood

June 2, 2010 - As the Environmental Protection Agency vans roll from one home to the next, each one marked with a red dot on a map, Dorothy Felix tags along like a proud parent. At each stop, EPA investigators collect potentially tainted water from the kitchen tap and possibly toxic soil samples from the yard.

"This is a very important day. It's a day that should have come a long time ago. We have traveled a long journey and I feel like victory is close," Felix says, smiling.

Nearby, an EPA contractor uses a hand trowel to scoop hard-packed dirt into glass jars for testing at a government lab in Houston, Texas. Felix and other environmental activists in this southwest Louisiana community tried for decades to convince the state and federal governments they live in a toxic town.

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Pearl River Contamination in New Orleans May Pose Health Risks

April 3, 2009 - Environmental officials in Mississippi are warning residents along the swolen Pearl River that its waters may be contaminated.

A statement from the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality advises against swimming in the river and its tributaries and eating anything out of the water unless it is thoroughly cooked.

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Contaminated homes in New Orleans denied funds

March 27, 2008 - It was one thing for Leatrice Roberts to find out that the government had sold her a townhome built on top of a waste dump. But it was mindboggling to learn, at age 74, that the Road Home can't buy her out because the land is contaminated.

In the past two weeks, state officials informed homeowners such as Leatrice Roberts who lived atop the old Agriculture Street landfill before Hurricane Katrina hit that their Road Home applications had been placed on hold indefinitely because they live on a Superfund cleanup site. The EPA in 1994 added the 9th Ward enclave to its Superfund list, but said the area could be made safe with mitigation steps such as the replacement of topsoil.

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Study: Mostly minorities live near hazardous waste

May 5, 2007 - Nearly 90 percent of the people who live near a commercial hazardous waste site in the Baton Rouge area are minorities, according to a new study.

The burden of pollution falling on black people here and nationally has gotten worse rather than better in the past 20 years, according to Robert Bullard of Clark Atlanta University.

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