Category: Local News

BILOXI, Miss. (AP) — Officials in Mississippi are trying to force the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River Commission to consult with them before opening the Bonnet Carré Spillway in Louisiana again and flooding the region with polluted river water.

A federal lawsuit filed this week by several cities, counties and groups accuses the corps and commission of violating federal law by opening the spillway more frequently. They say the defendants hurt wildlife and localities by opening it for prolonged periods of time without considering the consequences.

The spillway has been opened 14 times since it was built in the 1930s to help manage Mississippi River flooding and navigation. Of those openings, five have happened since 2011. It was opened in 2018 and 2019, marking the first time the spillway was opened for two consecutive years. This year alone, the spillway was opened twice and left open for a total of 123 days. The corps’ manual plans for spillway openings ever seven to 10 years to stop rivers from flooding New Orleans.

And the increased rainfall from warming temperatures means the frequent openings will likely continue, the lawsuit says.

The increased opening of the spillway has cause polluted river water to spread throughout the region, according to the lawsuit. It’s blamed for issues including high wildlife mortality rates, decreased salinity levels and the spread of potentially toxic algae blooms that led to the monthslong limit of contact with water at beaches and vacation spots. News outlets report the impact was reminiscent of the 2010 BP oil spill, which caused a record number of dolphin and sea turtle corpses to wash ashore.

The president of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies and the chair of Mississippi Sound Coalition’s Science Advisory Committee said this appears even worse than the oil spill.

“We have a catastrophic loss of our fisheries,” Moby Solangi said, according to WXXV-TV. “Oysters are gone. We have hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in tourism, natural resources, and the image. So, if this continues and nothing is done, the Mississippi Sound and the coastal communities are going to suffer.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce in September declared a federal fisheries disaster in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana over the Gulf of Mexico’s being flooded with fresh water from the spillway’s prolonged opening. The Mississippi Department of Marine Resources has estimated that spillway openings cost fisheries more than $160 million.

The corps opens the spillway after it gets approval from the commission’s president, who leads the corps’ Mississippi Valley Division.

The lawsuit seeks a temporary injunction that requires the corps to consult local governments about how to minimize the impacts of opening the spillway. It also wants the defendants to study the impacts of frequent spillway openings and offer ways to mitigate damage. Such mitigating actions could include releasing water through other spillways and addressing river pollution, according to the lawsuit.

Reports don’t include comment from the defendants.

NESBIT, Miss. (AP) — Singer-songwriter and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jerry Lee Lewis has been given a Mississippi Country Music Trail marker.

The 84-year-old’s marker was unveiled Thursday at his ranch in Nesbit, news outlets report. The event was attended by Gov. Phil Bryant, Grammy-winning singer Marty Stuart and local officials. The Mississippi County Music Trail celebrates the state’s contributions to country music, according to its website .

Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana, in 1935. He later moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and began establishing himself as a musician there in 1956. The next year, he secretly married his 13-year-old cousin. The news of his third marriage would become public during a tour in 1958, causing his career to nosedive.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — At least two more cases of chronic wasting disease have been found in Mississippi deer.

Two of the cases have been confirmed and another 10 cases that tested positive are in the process of being confirmed, according to Russ Walsh, the chief of staff for Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks Wildlife Bureau.

Of the 12 new cases, 11 were found in Benton County and one was found in Marshall County, both of which border Tennessee, The Clarion Ledger reports.

Prior to Mississippi’s 2019 deer season, the state had 19 confirmed cases of the deadly neurological disease that causes infected animals to become listless and lose weight, among other symptoms. Tennessee has seen 148 confirmed cases of the disease since its deer season started. That means it has had more than 330 confirmed cases since Nov of 2018, most of which are in the southwestern part of the state near the Mississippi border, Walsh said, adding that such data has led officials to believe north Mississippi’s cases are part of the Tennessee outbreak.

Hunters are encouraged to kill more deer this season, Walsh said. More kills means more samples for testings and the possible reduction in the spread of the disease, he said. The agency has a goal of 10,000 samples to be submitted this year. So far, it only has about 2,400.

At least one person was killed Monday as strong storms left a trail of smashed buildings, splintered trees and downed power lines in Louisiana, and forecasters said more states were in the bullseye.

One person died when an apparent tornado struck a small residential area in Vernon Parish, but details were immediately available, said Chief Deputy Calvin Turner.

Officials fear others could be hurt in the area since crews were still trying to get into hard-hit areas where downed trees and power lines blocked roads, he said.

“We’ve got damage at lots of places. We’ve got a church where the fellowship hall is torn all to pieces. Some homes are hit. Right now we’re having trouble just getting to places because of tress that are down,” said Turner.

In nearby Alexandria, Louisiana, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of New Orleans, a sheriff’s official said the storm system left roads impassable, peeled the roof off of a church and destroyed a car lot.

“As of right now we’ve had people trapped. I don’t have any reported injuries,” said Capt. Phillip Jordan of the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office. Nearly 6,000 area homes and businesses were without power, according to the Louisiana utility Cleco.

Damage also was reported about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away in DeRidder, but details weren’t immediately available.

Entergy Mississippi reported more than 2,000 power outages in the neighboring state, concentrated mostly west of the state capital of Jackson along the path of a storm where a tornado was spotted on the ground.

There were no immediate reports of injuries there, but the weather service said the threat of severe weather would continue all day as a cold front mixed with warmer air.

About 1 million people live in an area of northeastern Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi that had a moderate chance of dangerous weather, forecasters said. A tornado watch was issued from east Texas through Louisiana into central Mississippi and southern Arkansas.

Forecasters said a lesser threat extended into Alabama, western Georgia, the western Florida Panhandle and Tennessee as storms moved eastward.

School systems in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi dismissed students early and canceled afternoon events and activities as a precaution because of the weather threat.

Forecasters said tornadoes, hail and winds blowing at 70 mph (112 kph) posed the greatest threat as a cold front moved across the region in an easterly direction. Storms that are predicted to begin in the west could last until early Tuesday in the eastern, forecasters said.

Tornadoes in December aren’t as unusual as they might seem.

Monday was the 19th anniversary of a Southeastern tornado outbreak that included a twister which killed 11 people in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and storms on Dec. 1, 2018, spawned more than two dozen tornadoes in the Midwest.