Mississippi River
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Children living in FEMA trailers are alarmingly sick
Photo: Marni Rosen Children who moved into FEMA trailers after losing their homes in Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have alarming rates of sickness and mental health problems, according to an in-depth review of medical records. Forty-two percent of the children studied suffer from respiratory troubles that may be linked to formaldehyde in the trailers.
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How did so much water get into a New Orleans canal?
Here’s a question I’d like to know the answer to. Hurricane Gustav dealt New Orleans a glancing blow, passing it by to the west. Yet as the world saw, the city’s Industrial Canal — a large ship channel running north-south close to neighborhoods — filled nearly to the top, and there was some alarming, if […]
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EPA puts kibosh on wetland-destructive Army Corps project
The U.S. EPA has vetoed a giant, expensive plan to build the world’s largest water pump in the Mississippi River delta. The so-called Yazoo Pump flood-control project would have sucked 6 million gallons of water a minute from 67,000 acres of wetlands along the Yazoo River. The scheme, proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of […]
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Wildlife so far largely safe from Mississippi River oil spill
Louisiana wildlife have so far largely escaped harm from the oil spill that shut down 100 miles of the Mississippi River last week. But biologists remain nervous as the oil slick heads downstream toward the Delta National Wildlife Refuge and neighboring marshy areas, where nearly 100,000 migratory birds will alight in the fall. Barriers are […]
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Oil spills into Mississippi River after tanker-barge collision
Some 420,000 gallons of fuel oil spilled into the Mississippi River early Wednesday, after a 600-foot chemical tanker collided with a fuel barge. The collision split the barge in half; thick, slow-to-evaporate fuel has traveled at least 12 miles downriver. The Coast Guard closed a 29-mile stretch of the river around New Orleans, and residents […]
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As fertilizer flows from the Midwest, a vast algae bloom thrives below the Mississippi
Every year since the early 1980s, a monstrous algae bloom has risen up in the Gulf of Mexico, fed by fertilizer runoff from Midwest farms. The nasty growth sucks oxygen from the ocean beneath it — snuffing out sea life even as climate change and other human-induced factors threaten the globe’s fish stocks. Ironically, as […]
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Early-spring images from the headwaters of the Mississippi River
The phrase “Mississippi River” conjures a swirl of images in our collective imagination: wide, turbulent, muddy waters; chugging steamships and heavily laden barges; violent, life-altering floods; maybe even Mark Twain chomping on a pipe. Everything outsized, legendary. But at the headwaters of the river, in a quiet corner of northern Minnesota, the scene is a […]
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As Corps series ends, big questions remain about the future of the Mississippi
There are 8 million stories in the Mississippi Basin, and this week we’ve told only a few. As lead editor of this Army Corps series, I’ve been immersed for the last few months in all things Mississippi River. Coming out the other side, I have a few answers, yes, but even more questions to explore. […]
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Army Corps climate efforts in New Orleans may not be enough
No one wants to see this again — but can post-Katrina protection efforts keep the Big Easy safe? Photo: NOAA Here’s the good news: The Army Corps of Engineers is “racing” to complete a comprehensive levee system for metropolitan New Orleans by 2011 that actually takes into account global warming, at least in terms of […]