Mississippi
A salty problem for people near the mouth of the Mississippi is a wakeup call for New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The heating element removed from Monique Plaisance’s water heater in September was disintegrating, streaked with rust and covered in a dry crust. She blamed the corrosion on the water piped in from the area’s longtime drinking water source: the Mississippi River.
It was a similar story not far away at the Black Velvet Oyster Bar and Grill.
“We’re draining the hot water heater every few days to get most, or a good bit, of the salt out of that,” owner Byron Marinovich said. “The ice machine has been off since the third week of April.”
Plaisance’s home and Marinovich’s restaurant are in the Buras community of rural Plaquemines Parish, roughly 60 miles (about 96 kilometers) southeast of New Orleans and 20 to 30 miles (32 to 48 kilometers) upriver from where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico. As in New Orleans, drinking water in the parish is drawn from the river.
But this year, the gulf pushed back. A wedge of salt water slipped up along the river bottom, beginning in the spring.
By early October, water intakes at towns such as Boothville, Port Sulphur and Pointe a la Hache had been inundated.
Plaquemines officials list a variety of measures to provide drinkable water to residents in the southeastern part of the parish, which juts into the gulf. Trucks of bottled water for drinking and barges full of fresh water to dilute the salt water before it goes into intakes are among the solutions.
Advisories against drinking tap water were lifted Oct. 18.
Plaisance and Marinovich are among residents who think remedial efforts began too late. They blame parish officials for not taking action until the water began posing a threat to more populated areas including the city of Belle Chasse, which is at the parish’s northernmost end and home to more than 10,000 people, roughly half the population of the mostly rural parish.
“We’ve been working on this since June the 19th,” Parish President Keith Hinkley said in a telephone interview. “We have not drug our feet. We moved as fast as we could in getting these projects up and running. We made a decision to get a water station, water plant, back up and running that had been down for two years. We got it back up in a position to start producing water in somewhere between six to eight weeks.”
Authorities cite multiple factors for the salt water intrusion. Most prominent this year has been a drought across the Midwest that has meant less water flowing into the Mississippi and the rivers feeding it.
At Vicksburg, Mississippi, north of New Orleans, the river flowed at a rate about 50% slower and at a stage height about 95% lower than normal during late September and early October between 2013 and 2022, according to analysis of data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
Parts of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin — all part of the vast Mississippi River basin, which touches 31 states — are experiencing extreme drought conditions. Rainfall amounts are down in the watershed of the Ohio River, which contributes half of the Mississippi’s flow reaching new Orleans.
Another factor is dredging, according to Stephen Murphy, an assistant professor at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine and the director of the university’s Disaster Management Program. The lower Mississippi is frequently dredged by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to make way for huge cargo ships serving ports vital to the Louisiana and national economies.
The lower, slower river flow and a deep, wide river channel set the stage for gulf water to push inland.
Earlier in the fall, projections that the salt water would reach the New Orleans area by late October prompted residents to stock up on bottled water while public officials undertook emergency preparations as though there were a slowly approaching hurricane.
In Jefferson Parish, next to New Orleans, officials began laying out flexible piping resembling giant fire hoses in a plan to pipe water from farther up the Mississippi to dilute the salt water.
New Orleans officials also were working on a plan to build an emergency pipeline. The hope was that much of the projected cost, as high as $250 million, would be covered by the federal government under a presidential emergency declaration issued in September.
Updated projections have negated the need for the measure. The more favorable river forecasts are a result of various factors, including the Corps’ construction of what amounts to an underwater dam in Plaquemines to impede salt water progress. Recent rains in western Louisiana also have been a factor.
While the threat to the New Orleans area has been diminished, local leaders say it’s a wake-up call.
“If this is what we’re going to be facing every couple of years, we certainly want to make an investment in how to solve this problem,” Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said.
This is the fifth year the Corps has built an underwater structure to slow the salt water flow. But this is the first time sill construction has been used in consecutive years. Before last year, others were built in 1988, 1999 and 2012.
Rising seas portend more problems. The sea level around New Orleans is rising at a rate of as much as 9 millimeters (0.35 inches) per year, or three feet (about 1 meter) each century, much higher than the global average and the highest rate measured in the United States, according to experts at NOAA’s Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services.
“My worry is we continue to experience these low river flow rates and have a repeat occurrence year after year after year. And at some point I worry that that salt water wedge could creep further upriver and then we would be finding ourselves in the same predicament upriver as we are right now in the city,” said Murphy, the assistant professor.
In the New Orleans area, permanent pipelines to draw water from upriver have been discussed. But Murphy doesn’t think pipelines are the solution.
Large-scale reverse osmosis filtration systems may be the answer, Murphy said. He pointed to Tampa Bay, Florida, as an example of where desalinization is used for drinking water and said Gulf Coast communities should collaborate to find ways to safeguard water systems.
It also may be time to hold regional meetings to discuss the threat, Murphy said.
“Maybe we should all start partnering together, much like we do for hurricane conferences,” he said. “Maybe we should be talking about climate change conferences.”
___
Smith reported from New Orleans and Buras, Louisiana. Associated Press reporters Mary Katherine Wildeman in Hartford, Connecticut, and Camille Fassett, in Seattle contributed to this report.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Mississippi
Mississippi asks for execution date of man convicted in 1993 killing, lawyers plan to appeal case to SCOTUS
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, a Republican, is seeking an execution date for a convicted killer who has been on death row for 30 years, but his lawyer argues that the request is premature since the man plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Charles Ray Crawford, 58, was sentenced to death in connection with the 1993 kidnapping and killing of 20-year-old community college student Kristy Ray, according to The Associated Press.
During his 1994 trial, jurors pointed to a past rape conviction as an aggravating circumstance when they issued Crawford’s sentence, but his attorneys said Monday that they are appealing that conviction to the Supreme Court after a lower court ruled against them last week.
Crawford was arrested the day after Ray was kidnapped from her parents’ home and stabbed to death in Tippah County. Crawford told officers he had blacked out and did not remember killing her.
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Mississippi death row inmate Charles Ray Crawford, who was convicted and sentenced to death in 1994 in the 1993 kidnapping and killing of a community college student, 20-year-old Kristy Ray. (Mississippi Department of Corrections via AP)
He was arrested just days before his scheduled trial on a charge of assaulting another woman by hitting her over the head with a hammer.
The trial for the assault charge was delayed several months before he was convicted. In a separate trial, Crawford was found guilty in the rape of a 17-year-old girl who was friends with the victim of the hammer attack. The victims were at the same place during the attacks.
Crawford said he also blacked out during those incidents and did not remember committing the hammer assault or the rape.
During the sentencing portion of Crawford’s capital murder trial in Ray’s death, jurors found the rape conviction to be an “aggravating circumstance” and gave him the death sentence, according to court records.
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During the sentencing portion of Crawford’s capital murder trial, jurors found his prior rape conviction to be an “aggravating circumstance” and gave him the death sentence. (iStock)
In his latest federal appeal of the rape case, Crawford claimed his previous lawyers provided unconstitutionally ineffective assistance for an insanity defense. He received a mental evaluation at the state hospital, but the trial judge repeatedly refused to allow a psychiatrist or other mental health professional outside the state’s expert to help in Crawford’s defense, court records show.
On Friday, a majority of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Crawford’s appeal.
But the dissenting judges wrote that he received an “inadequately prepared and presented insanity defense” and that “it took years for a qualified physician to conduct a full evaluation of Crawford.” The dissenting judges quoted Dr. Siddhartha Nadkarni, a neurologist who examined Crawford.
“Charles was laboring under such a defect of reason from his seizure disorder that he did not understand the nature and quality of his acts at the time of the crime,” Nadkarni wrote. “He is a severely brain-injured man (corroborated both by history and his neurological examination) who was essentially not present in any useful sense due to epileptic fits at the time of the crime.”
Photo shows the gurney of an execution chamber. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
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Crawford’s case has already been appealed multiple times using various arguments, which is common in death penalty cases.
Hours after the federal appeals court denied Crawford’s latest appeal, Fitch filed documents urging the state Supreme Court to set a date for Crawford’s execution by lethal injection, claiming that “he has exhausted all state and federal remedies.”
However, the attorneys representing Crawford in the Mississippi Office of Post-Conviction Counsel filed documents on Monday stating that they plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court’s ruling.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The rest of the night will be calm. We’ll cool down into the mid to upper 50s overnight tonight. A big cold front will arrive on Thanksgiving, bringing a few showers. Temperatures will drop dramatically after the front passes. It will be much cooler by Friday! Frost will be possible this weekend. Here’s the latest forecast.
Mississippi
Ole Miss football vs Mississippi State score prediction, scouting report in 2024 Egg Bowl
OXFORD — There’s always an added element of intensity in the Egg Bowl.
It will be important for Ole Miss football (8-3, 4-3) to find an extra gear against Mississippi State (2-9, 0-7 SEC) in Friday’s rivalry matchup (2:30 p.m., ABC). The Rebels are coming off a deflating loss at Florida that left Ole Miss’ College Football Playoff hopes hanging by a thread.
Mississippi State is slogging through a difficult year under first-year head coach Jeff Lebby. While first-year head coaches have fared surprisingly well in Egg Bowl games over the years, the Rebels will be heavy favorites at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium on Black Friday. The game is just the second Egg Bowl in eight years not to be played on Thanksgiving.
Let’s dive into the matchup:
Why Jaxson Dart, Rebels’ offense should be able to extend drives
Usually defenses that force opposing into offenses into third-down situations fare well. For Mississippi State, completing the job on third down has been difficult.
The Bulldogs have allowed SEC opponents to convert on 70 of 147 third downs. That is 47.6%, and the worst mark in the SEC. Ole Miss’ defense, by comparison, is No. 5 in the SEC at 32%.
More broadly, the Bulldogs’ defense has been getting gashed in SEC play. Mississippi State has allowed 40.7 points per SEC game. Even if star Ole Miss receiver Tre Harris is out because of an injury, the Rebels have a good opportunity to light up the scoreboard like they did in a 63-31 win at Arkansas.
Can Ole Miss rack up the sacks, keep Dart upright?
Stats indicate Friday’s game will be easier for Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart than Mississippi State quarterback Michael Van Buren Jr.
Mississippi State has allowed 35 sacks against SEC opponents. The inverse also bodes poorly for the Bulldogs. Mississippi State is last in the SEC in sacks. In 11 SEC games, the Bulldogs have just eight.
To make it harder on Van Buren Jr., Ole Miss’ defense leads the SEC in sacks. Look for him to get pressured early and often by a ferocious defensive line. There could − and maybe should − be two or three Rebels with multiple sacks in the Egg Bowl.
Rebels rushers Princely Umanmielen and Suntarine Perkins are prime candidates to feast. They each have 10.5 sacks, which ties them for No. 6 in the nation.
Will Ole Miss try to run up the score on the Bulldogs?
Aside from satisfying its fan base in a heated rivalry, Ole Miss has another reason to try to win big against Mississippi State. It’s the Rebels’ last chance to impress the College Football Playoff Committee.
Because of chaos in Week 13, the Rebels can still cling to an outside shot at making the College Football Playoff. While the Rebels will need other teams to lose Saturday, a dominating win Friday will only help their case.
On the flip side, even a narrow win against a Mississippi State team that hasn’t won a Power Four game this season would make it easier for the committee to exclude the Rebels.
Ole Miss football vs Mississippi State Egg Bowl score prediction
Ole Miss 42, Mississippi State 9: Each of the Rebels’ SEC games has resulted in one of two things: a close loss or blowout win. Expect the latter in the final regular season game at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. Ole Miss has the pass rush to create turnovers that will overwhelm an outmatched Bulldogs team.
Sam Hutchens covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at Shutchens@gannett.com or reach him on X at @Sam_Hutchens_
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