A recent report from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor claims Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser and the administration may have violated the parish charter and local ordinance when it entered into two hurricane recovery projects in 2007. The study also details three other potential legal and ethical violations: failure to include grants from the Federal Emergency [...]
Plaquemines Parish District Attorney Charles Ballay has filed suit against British Petroleum in the 25th Judicial District Court on behalf of the State of Louisiana for harm to wildlife in the waters of Plaquemines Parish, the DA’s office said in a news release June 3.
For the people of Plaquemines Plaquemines who call this tiny sliver of land straddling the Mississippi River home, June 1 is a difficult date to celebrate. Plaqueminians – and residents all across the Gulf Coast – invariably approach June 1, the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, with uncertainty and trepidation.
Mid-way through a June 2 press conference in Venice, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal got word that the federal government would indeed require British Petroleum to pay for the initial six reaches of the state’s innovative, oil-blocking barrier island plan.
Billy Nungesser and Craig Taffaro – the first-term parish presidents from Plaquemines and St. Bernard – must have a touch of pirate in them, because their quest to see President Barack Obama May 28 in Grand Isle was nothing short of privateer perfection.
As feelings of helplessness began to mount last week with the oil spill in the Gulf moving into its second month, Plaquemines Parish residents gathered for two town hall meetings to confront British Petroleum and Coast Guard representatives face-to-face with their frustrations and fears.
Long considered the weakest link in Plaquemines Parish’s Westbank levee protection system, the private, non-federal levees between Oakville and Diamond are now on a faster track to adoption into the federal New Orleans to Venice levee system.
“President Nungesser, dredge away.”
Plaquemines Parish Council Chair Don Beshel offered those words of affirmation to Parish President Billy Nungesser after the council voted unanimously May 27 to appropriate $1 million to jump start a plan to construct sand barriers to help guard the parish’s fragile coast against encroaching oil.
