A permit application submitted by Jefferson Island Storage & Hub to Louisiana’s Office of Coastal Management — a division of the Department of Natural Resources — for a contentious project to develop natural gas storage caverns beneath Lake Peigneur went public Tuesday.
“We’re just in the mix of reviewing this permit and gathering all agency and public comments that would draw any attention to certain aspects of this project,” says OCM reviewer Sharon McCarthy.
The proposed project has been at the center of an ongoing dispute between the environmental advocacy group Save Lake Peigneur and JISH over a number of mysterious occurrences witnessed in the lake, which is located near the border of Iberia and Vermilion parishes.
Nara Crowley, a lead advocate in the fight to stop JISH from adding two additional storage caverns, says for years residents’ fears have fallen on deaf ears, especially those of the company’s leaders.
“We have unresolved bubbling, the withdrawal of drinking water and several other major concerns,” Crowley says in an e-mail. “All this is being disregarded.”
The situation may be changing, however, thanks to recent vows of support from U.S. Congressman Charles Boustany, Sen. David Vitter, and the Vermilion Parish Police Jury. Support also is expected from Sen. Mary Landrieu, says Crowley, as well as the Iberia Parish Council, which will vote tonight on a resolution calling for a full halt to the proposed expansion project.
As far as Tuesday’s notice is concerned, OCM’s McCarthy says it is only a public notice and not an approval of JISH’s permit.
McCarthy says public comments will be accepted through Jan. 5, followed by a five-day grace period for comments submitted by mail.
“If there is a public hearing request then that would extend the review period,” adds McCarthy. “There’s no definite date this permit would be issued either.
All the possible issues must be resolved before that will happen.”
Likewise, McCarthy says for the project to move forward, JISH also must undergo the application process with all necessary state and federal agencies, mainly DEQ’s Office of Conservation, and the U.S. Environmental Agency, among others.
Click here to view Tuesday’s public notice, and here for more on the fight over Lake Peigneur.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
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