For the Harper and Salles families in St. Tammany Parish, the cypress swamp behind their homes is an idyllic outdoor playground for their children where they catch crawfish, throw out lines for catfish and splash around in Hickory Creek, a meandering stream that feeds into Old River and, eventually, the West Pearl. “A cypress swamp […]
Lousiana Supreme Court Refuses to Hear LDEQ Appeal
Thermaldyne is a new facility that reclaims oil from materials that are, in all but name, industrial hazardous waste. It applied to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) for a permit to discharge the water that is leftover into the Intracoastal Canal, directly upstream of the intake for the drinking water of about 10,000 […]
Court rules DEQ must force Thermaldyne to identify pollutants headed for Intracoastal Waterway
State environmental regulators must require an oil refinery waste reclamation company in Port Allen to identify the pollutants it wants to dump into the Intracoastal Waterway in West Baton Rouge Parish, a state appeals court ruled. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Louisiana 1st Circuit Court of Appeal upheld a lower-court ruling that regulators must […]
‘Colossal bait-and-switch’: Port Allen plant’s air permit modification attacked in court
Calling a Port Allen industrial recycling plant’s modified air permit a “colossal bait-and-switch,” a lawyer for environmentalists asked a Baton Rouge judge Wednesday to vacate the permit and send it back to a state regulatory agency for more study. Louisiana Environmental Action Network attorney Clay Garside argued to state District Judge Trudy White that Thermaldyne’s […]
Oil sludge recycling facility Thermaldyne opens near Port Allen despite court challenges
The Thermaldyne industrial recycling facility near Port Allen has opened for business despite several ongoing legal challenges. The company began advertising job openings in The Advocate over the weekend and told the paper it began operations last week and will start processing sludge in the coming week. Environmentalists and another recycling company have filed for […]
Colonial Landfill operators agree to more testing for gas emissions, odors in suit settlement
The operators of the Colonial Landfill near Sorrento have agreed to increased air monitoring for two years under a settlement ending litigation over a permit allowing expanded dumping at the decades-old waste pile. BFI Waste Systems of Louisiana, a subsidiary of Republic Services, has agreed to hire a third-party company to test for methane and, […]