A landmark settlement with an oil and gas company that could potentially unlock big dollars to help restore Louisiana’s disappearing coast has yet to advance, three months after the tentative agreement was announced. The deal with Freeport calls for the company to pay up to $100 million in cash and in what Carmouche calls “environmental credits.”

The federal agency says that in addition to coastal Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties in Mississippi, the declaration covers adjacent counties and parishes.

The Town has a goal to dredge canals within the community to keep them navigable and to maintain property values.

A judge has sentenced Mark Edward Zywotko, 47, of Cape Coral to 60 days in federal prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release, for committing mail fraud in the perpetration of a fraudulent scheme to overharvest more than 50,000 pounds of Gulf reef fish from the waters off Southwest Florida.

Sarasota County will dedicate $20 million toward the Nathan Benderson Park project and plans to reallocate money budgeted for tourism promotion

The Alabama Department of Conservation announced Monday that interested parties can begin submitting project proposals they wish to be funded through Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act (GOMESA) monies.

The 2020 Marco Speaker Series presented by the Audubon of the Western Everglades (AWE) was held at Mackle Park on Wednesday, January 8th, 2020. It was led by biologist Ryan Young on Florida’s Mangroves and their Importance in the Environment.

The project's consultant writes the homeowners wanted to create a more natural shape to the dune to stabilize the sand.

Coming soon to our Manasota Key beaches: The Gulf of Mexico. Like it or not, if we don’t add more sand periodically, our beachfront homes and condos will fall into the Gulf. I’m not talking about any sea level changes or global warming here — just the normal course of shifting sands. I can’t say beach renourishment is good, but I understand it’s necessary because we built on migrating barrier islands. These islands aren’t stable. They never have been. The beaches will always be temporary.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Galveston District and the Jefferson County Drainage District No. 7 (DD7) are set to begin construction of the Port Arthur and Vicinity Coastal Storm Risk Management Project (CSRM).

Friends of RGV Reef has launched a major new phase of its artificial reefing project off South Padre Island, even as fishing boats reel in large numbers of red snapper the reef is already producing.

The sand so many Manasota Key beachfront homeowners have been waiting for may be on its way soon.

One treehouse built in Holmes Beach in 2011 without a permit has led to four pending lawsuits spanning seven years.

On a stretch of the Lower Keys, near an old borrow pit quarried during the construction of Big Pine, sea water and mud cover much of the rocky ground.

As Mote seeks $20 million in public funds from Sarasota County for an aquarium at Nathan Benderson Park, the county could divert tax dollars from tourism promotion and arts programming.

State permit shows DEP gave the homeowners permission to excavate 6 feet of dune in order to cope with "windblown material."

The first Tampa Bay Regional Resiliency Coalition Leadership Summit kicked off Tuesday. Local officials were there, and so was Florida’s new Chief Resilience Officer.

The rating agency responsible for assigning financial stability ratings (FSR) to more than 40 Florida domestic insurers has warned that several carriers will receive downgrades due to deteriorating conditions in the state’s property insurance market, and more than a dozen more could be downgraded in the next few months

As tugs and pushboats become larger and more complex, one sector of the industry is growing by staying small. The truckable towboat is having its moment and Marine Inland Fabricators (MIF) is happy to meet the growing demand.

Beachgoers and homeowners on Anna Maria Island beachfront property are clashing over rope fences that make it harder for visitors to walk along the beach.

Retaliation, rather than reconciliation, has prevailed in the conflict over public beach access at N. Shell Road on Siesta Key.

Louisiana is setting rules for a barrier island that's being restored to greatly increase the number of pelicans and other seabirds that can nest there.

Few residents offered their thoughts on the spending plan for the state’s agency charged with restoring the coast and building storm protection.

Since 2006, Nicholls Farm has become a haven to preserve native trees and other plants that have either disappeared from Louisiana or grow in areas threatened by coastal erosion.

Anna Maria Island’s beaches wouldn’t be so impressive without a little bit of help. The sandy shores people know and love in Anna Maria, Bradenton Beach and Holmes Beach are the product of a noisy necessity: beach renourishment.

BOCA GRANDE — Only one water sample throughout Florida — 15 miles off Collier County’s Gulf coastline — has shown any signs of the toxic red tide algae in 2020. The counts may be low, but the subject, and the worries over red tide, have not dissolved from the public’s mind.

A proposed fish farm, called the Velella Epsilon Project, that would be anchored in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, 45 miles west of Sarasota Bay and slightly south, is under review.

The preparation activities for the Manasota Key Beach Renourishment Project, to be conducted by Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Corporation (GLDD), are currently underway.

Destin ponders cost of placing utility lines underground

A marine laboratory 85 miles southwest of New Orleans was designed to be a fortress against extreme weather. But it might be defeated by climate change.

The potential environmental and economic consequences posed by proposals for fish farming in federal waters dictate that Congress — not a federal agency — must decide how to regulate the industry, an attorney told a federal appeals court Monday.

American white pelicans breed in Canada and the upper Midwest, and they typically winter near the Gulf of Mexico and coastal Southern California. However, more of these enormous wetland birds are wintering in Arizona because of the state’s prime living conditions.

Money to push two marsh restoration projects in Lafourche Parish may move forward at the end of the month.

The massive proposed $1.4 billion Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, a few miles downriver from New Orleans, could create or save from erosion as much as 47 square miles of land and wetlands in Barataria Bay over its first 50 years, new computer modeling shows.

An effort to reconnect Louisiana wetlands to historical levels is taking place at Louisiana State University, where a 10,000-square-foot replica of the Mississippi Delta is now housed. Researchers are working to understand how man-made changes are impacting the Mississippi River and surrounding wetlands. Nexus Media News’ Josh Landis reports as part of our climate change series, "Peril & Promise."

Thanks to a permit delivered Christmas eve, residents of Manasota Key may see equipment for beach renourishment in about two weeks. Charlotte County Project Manager Matt Logan updated the Beaches and Shores Advisory Committee on the massive two-county project Thursday. Construction could begin in mid-February, Logan said.

Flood waters from a ditch running under FM 1416 in Newton County rush onto an abandoned property in Newton County Friday. Many residents of a Bon Wier neighborhood known as "The Hole" evacuated Thursday as rising waters quickly flooded the area, nearing entry levels at some elevated homes. Heavy rainfall and the opening of the dams at Toledo Bend have swelled the Sabine River, area creeks and ditches and is expected to rise further through the weekend. Photo taken Friday, March 30, 2018 Kim Brent/The Enterprise

Private property owners cannot block access to public beach property, a Sarasota County government official said.

Local governments across south Louisiana are suing oil and gas companies over alleged damage to the state’s fragile coastline. Billions of dollars are at stake.

What happens in Louisiana doesn’t stay in Louisiana. The state's role in the oil and gas industry impacts both global markets and global climate change. It’s also on the front line of climate change impacts due to sea level rise and is vulnerable to storm systems intensified by global warming. Here is a selection of photos from a decade of my coverage of environmental issues in Louisiana.

Rice University-led study shows only rapid reduction of greenhouse gases will let banks thrive

The Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA) has released its 2019 Year in Review outlining the agency’s accomplishments in coastal protection and restoration.

NAVARRE BEACH — Every year from about October through February, Julie White scrawls ‘slow shoulder season’ on her check list.

The plan to renourish the highly eroded Lido Key shoreline with sand dredged from Big Pass has faced years of court challenges primarily from opponents on Siesta Key. Now that the plan is slated to finally move forward, Sarasota County is balking at the request to use Ted Sperling on South Lido Key as a staging area for the project.

Now that the Manasota Key Beach renourishment project is split in two, some residents may have to pay a heavier burden of the cost

Are you looking to dispose of your Christmas tree in a unique way? The City of Orange Beach is asking residents to place their trees on the curb over the next week. Be sure you remove all of the decorations and lights before you leave it out for pickup.

Mississippi Coast localities and two associations have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Mississippi River Commission to protect coastal waters from future damage caused by Mississippi River water pouring from the Bonnet Carré Spillway.

During Hurricane Harvey, thousands of properties behind two federally owned reservoirs flooded. On Tuesday, the United States Court of Federal Claims ruled that the government was liable for the flooding and that property owners are eligible for damages.

According to Jay Tusa, executive director for the Walton County Tourist Development Council, the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Dune Allen Regional Beach Access was just the start of a “really exciting time for Walton.”

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — The county will impose new taxes on some South Hutchinson Island property owners to raise money for ongoing beach repairs.

“CWPPRA” provided the first regular stream of funding for the state’s wetlands

The Louisiana Coastal Restoration and Protection Authority expects to spend $958 million during the fiscal year that begins July 1, the most of any year in the history of the state’s coastal program, according to the draft spending plan released Wednesday.

Florida lawmakers are interested in addressing climate change. But they’re not setting any sort of renewable energy goals—which is something democrats have proposed in the past. Instead, the Republican-led majority is focusing on making the state more adaptable to rising sea levels.

A draft plan to spend $958 million in fiscal year 2021 on hurricane flood reduction and coastal restoration projects, with more than half the money coming from settlements related to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and oil spill, was presented Wednesday to the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.

Galveston, Texas, based dredging contractor Callan Marine recently launched the General MacArthur, one of the largest cutter suction dredges in the U.S. market, at the C&C Shipyard in Belle Chasse, La.

The South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) has awarded a contract to remove 5.5 miles of an elevated Tamiami Trail roadbed long cited as a “dam” that impedes Everglades’ sheet flow.

According to a pair of reports released December 9 and published in the Federal Register December 13, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is proposing spending about $3.2 billion on the New Orleans area’s Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) over the next 50 years to combat “consolidation, settlement, subsidence, sea level rise and new datum” which could otherwise render the system insufficient to protect against a 100-year storm (or one that has a 1 percent chance of striking the area in any given year). The Corps built the HSDRRS system, at a cost of more than $14 billion, after Hurricane Katrina flooded much of the greater New Orleans area in August 2005.

Chevron said on Thursday it had approved the development of a deepwater high-pressure oil project in the Gulf of Mexico, which will require US$5.7 billion investment for the initial development, in the industry’s first such deepwater high-pressure project to have reached a final investment decision (FID).

The city plans to discuss strategies for addressing problematic rental properties on St. Armands and Lido early next year.

A new wave of lawsuits against BP is hitting the federal courts nearly a decade after the Gulf oil spill.

It’s like buying a new car, when you expect one price, then sign the papers and learn the price is entirely different.

Visit Florida touts a “return on investment” by taxpayers, but that hasn’t always been the case.

Florida has an underappreciated secret weapon to help heal its ailing reefs: prickly sea urchins.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Tuesday to welcome the Dune Allen Regional Beach Access. The development is the first new regional beach access built in Walton County in more than a decade.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee wants attorney Daniel Uhlfelder to stop talking about him on social media while courts litigate customary use.

Something fishy’s going on at the back of the Ocean Springs High School parking lot.

Bucktown probably isn't the first place that comes to mind when you think of coastal restoration. In fact, Lake Pontchartrain probably isn't either.

PLANS TO RAISE LEVEES, FLOODWALLS: Corps proposes $3.2 billion in levee improvements, including projects to lift levees and floodwalls to higher elevations in order to keep the region protected from 100-year hurricanes through 2073.The Army Corps of Engineers has recommended a $3.2 billion, 50-year plan to elevate both the hurricane-protection levee systems on either side of the Mississippi River and several miles of river levees to keep pace with sinking soils and rising sea level.

This is the largest dedication of oil spill settlement funds to restore fish, sea turtles, marine mammals, and deep-sea coral habitat to date.

There is no shortage of spaceports in the United States. When launch sites come to mind, one usually thinks of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and neighboring Kennedy Space Center, or perhaps Vandenberg Air Force Base in California or Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Perhaps, also, Spaceport America in New Mexico, the future home of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo (see “An ‘operationally ready’ spaceport”, The Space Review, August 19, 2019)

Owners of hurricane-prone properties are trying to pass the price of their high-risk choices onto all Texas property insurance holders this week, manipulating a little-observed corner of state politics while most of us are not paying attention.

AUSTIN - The Texas General Land Office (GLO) will host three regional public hearings in Dallas, the Rio Grande Valley and Houston to seek input on the state's action plan detailing the distribution and eligible uses of $4,297,189,000 in Community Development Block Grant Mitigation (CDBG-MIT) funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to assist eligible communities with mitigation projects.

Grabbing a clump of vegetation to steady herself, Tiffany Troxler gingerly slides her feet along the makeshift boardwalk as she ventures out into the marsh. The boards sag, dipping her up to her knees in the tea-colored water.

All told, the beach project is expected to cost in the neighborhood of $45 million, though the town estimates needing to borrow a maximum of $34.5 million.

Beaches between Clam Pass and Park Shore South are filled with crews bringing in tons of sand.

Louisiana anglers can now fish for red snapper seven days a week.

Carey Schafer’s graduate research finds her waist deep in Florida waters, covered in mud and battling mosquitoes.

The small Santa Rosa County island has had 134 single-family dwellings built there since 2012, reported Santa Rosa County.