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Record heat, drought decimate Louisiana’s beloved crawfish season

Mar 15, 2024
Farmers are catching less than half of their normal haul. Restaurants are hiking prices for the tiny, lobster-like crustacean, which is threatening neighborhood traditions of gathering around a crawfish boil.
Andy DeGrange holds a batch of freshly boiled crawfish. One pound of his recipe sells for $19 this year, which is about twice as expensive as last year.
Matt Bloom

Water contamination in Black communities doesn't stop at Flint or Jackson

Jun 19, 2023
"When I was traveling throughout the South, I visited 11 cities. Every single city had water problems, had a water boil notice within the last year, or had reported having brown water trickling through their faucets," said reporter Adam Mahoney.
A resident of Beaumont, Texas looks on as the city attempts to flush out contamination from its water lines.
Courtesy Adam Mahoney

Facing regular floods, a Louisiana town builds higher

Jan 4, 2023
Residents see Mandeville as a model for other at-risk communities.
Leonard and Becky Rohrbough stand in front of their lakefront house, which was elevated in 2016 to protect against flooding.
Amy Scott/Marketplace

The origins of a glass recycling empire

Aug 19, 2022
The sand Glass Half Full creates from processed bottles is repurposed for flood disaster relief and mitigating coastal erosion, among other things.
Glass Half Full turns the glass it collects into a sand product that can be used in anything from art to disaster relief.
Courtesy Glass Half Full

In small-town Louisiana, the natural gas boom is paying a lot of bills

Dec 3, 2021
High prices are driving even more drilling in areas where fracking took off in the 2000s.
Grand Cane, Louisiana, sits above the Haynesville Shale, a rock formation that contains natural gas. Above, a drilling rig operation is shown behind Louisiana swampland.
grandriver via Getty Images

“It's going to take a while for people to come back”

Sep 10, 2021
A New Orleans-based journalist and homeowner reflects on Louisiana’s long road to recovery and its "care" infrastructure.
A person kayaks through flood waters in LaPlace, Louisiana, on Aug. 30 in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. New Orleans-based journalist Ko Bragg says the rest of the country has “a lot to learn” from southeast Louisiana.
Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

Power in parts of Louisiana may not be restored for weeks

Aug 31, 2021
"The longer the power's off, the more of a threat to a person's life safety," a former FEMA administrator says.
“Next to water, I would say the air conditioning is probably the biggest issue because it’s just brutally hot," says Douglas Harris, a professor of economics at Tulane University, of conditions in New Orleans.
Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images

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Making it hard to get an abortion comes with a cost

Jun 29, 2020
The Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana abortion law. For many women, having the procedure already requires travel and substantial financial costs.
Antiabortion activists demonstrate in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday. The court rejected a Louisiana abortion curb in a key victory for abortion rights activists.
Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

Supreme Court strikes down Louisiana abortion clinic restrictions

Jun 29, 2020
Chief Justice John Roberts joined with his four more liberal colleagues in the 5-4 ruling.
Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images

A rice by any other name...

May 23, 2019
Lawmakers in the state of Louisiana are debating when food products can be called “rice.”
Jeff Durand on his rice farm in St. Martinville, Louisiana.
Laine Kaplan-Levenson