Communities along the freshwater Mississippi River are facing a growing threat from an intrusion of saltwater moving the wrong way up the river from the Gulf of Mexico. It has wreaked havoc on public drinking water infrastructure for thousands of people, decimated a once-thriving local seafood industry, and has raised concerns about the future safety of New Orleans’ drinking water.

“This is our main water source,” said Mitch Jurisich, a third-generation oysterman and a local councilman in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana’s southernmost parish located an hour’s drive outside New Orleans, where he says damage from saltwater is a daily problem.

“It’s wiped out our public oyster grounds east of the river and put a lot of people in poverty,” Jurisich said.

Jurisich says saltwater intrusion issues used to only happen once a decade, but he says it’s occurred the last three summers in a row, and now the parish is gearing up for it to potentially happen again. 

As a result of the last three salty summers, Plaquemines Parish’s fresh water supply for approximately 23,000 of its residents has been compromised, and even though saltwater levels have been low for in the parish the last few months, Jurisich says the salt has left behind lasting and frustrating damage. 

The salt is corroding the parish’s water supply pipes, causing them to rust and burst underground — creating frequent muddy messes for parish workers to fix and reducing water pressure for residents in various neighborhoods across the parish. Jurisich says sometimes it’s difficult to even shower, because there’s only a slow drip out of the tap. 

Another concern is the potential for lead pipes to corrode and leach dangerous lead levels into the water supplies of homes in the parish that have lead pipe connections. It’s something Jurisich says the parish continues to monitor.

Fixing broken pipes and building stronger infrastructure to make this tiny parish more resilient to the problem would cost an estimated $200 million dollars, Jurisich says. 

The parish has become an unfortunate case study of just how serious the issue of saltwater intrusion can be. Other coastal cities around the world and the U.S. are currently facing the threat of what Plaquemines Parish has been subject to over the last few summers, including most recently in Philadelphia. 

Asked what his advice would be to other cities, Jurisich said, “You’re not ready till you get hit, you know, it’s just like some people don’t worry about a snake until it bites them … don’t wait to get prepared if you’re starting to see this trend. They need to start preparing for this.”

He says Plaquemines Parish has drafted a 10-year upgrade plan to address the saltwater problem, but acquiring grant money to pay for all of the projects has been difficult, especially at a time when the federal government has made significant spending cuts, including a freeze on promised grant money across the country.

“Power is a luxury. Water is a need,” Jurisch said.

Various studies from researchers around the world, including experts at the University of Arizona and Tulane University say drought, sea level rise, severe storms and dredging are partly to blame for the increase in frequency and swatch of saltwater intrusion.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says saltwater intrusion began happening regularly in the 1980s in southern Louisiana about once every decade following a dredging project of the Mississippi River to make the port of New Orleans more accessible to trade ships. 

In 2023, saltwater in the Mississippi River advanced dangerously close to New Orleans, threatening the city’s water supply and sending the city into a state of emergency. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the saltwater intrusion along with severe drought was “an unprecedented double water crisis.”

The Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for managing the river, built an underwater barrier called a “sill” that year to stop the saltwater from flowing further north. 

“And that prevents the water from getting up to the water intakes for the major metropolitan areas New Orleans, Saint Bernard,” Corps of Engineers spokesperson Ricky Boyett said. 

However, Boyett says the sill wears down over time, leading the Corps to rebuild the sill in the fall of 2024 to prevent another water scare in New Orleans.

For New Orleans, the threat is serious. In public comments to the federal agency, city leaders stressed how the Big Easy’s already fragile, aging drinking water infrastructure would have trouble withstanding the impacts if the 2024 sill were to breach. 

Just a week before tens of thousands of Super Bowl visitors flocked to the city for football’s biggest night, neighborhoods across downtown New Orleans experienced yet another boil water notice due to frequent water treatment energy surges and outages.

A spokesperson for the city of New Orleans wrote the following comment in part to the Corps: “There is an urgent need for data collection and model development to develop a risk assessment for drinking water resilience … we know that this threat will continue in the future and it would be extremely disruptive. We request that you study solutions to protect our municipal water supply including a desalination facility that could serve the greater New Orleans region.”

With an estimated $9 billion in annual tourist spending that pours into the Big Easy, Louisiana Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser says the city’s water and infrastructure must be protected with a more permanent solution. 

“It washes away in six months. We need to build land ridges and islands out there and give the coast a chance to survive, because we know these hurricanes are getting worse every year,” Nungesser said. 

Nungesser added that if saltwater levels were to hit New Orleans as high as they have hit Plaquemines Parish, “it would be a catastrophe, it would shut down the city.”

Another issue with the sill, Nungesser said, is that it’s located higher up the river, where the river is narrower, thus leaving Plaquemines Parish vulnerable and exposed to saltwater whenever the intrusion occurs.

That’s why Boyett says the Corps helped provide special reverse osmosis water filtration systems for Plaquemines Parish’s water supply.

Jurisich says because the filtration systems are remarkably expensive, his community desperately needs money to pay for long-term infrastructure upgrades. 

“It’s very costly, very expensive, and also high maintenance. You have to have specialized people ready to clean the filters and be on hand when something may not be working properly,” Jurisich said. 

But Nungesser argues a better option is to strengthen the Mississippi River’s flow by filling crevasses along the river’s edge that have widened over the years. He says state and local officials have been pushing the Corps to do that for more than decade. 

Just this month, the Corps announced it plans to fill one of the crevasses, because they have found that it has grown so large that it started pulling trade ships as they head towards the port of New Orleans. 

When asked what was the turning point for the Corps to take action, Boyett said: “We looked at it as soon as it started impacting navigation, that’s where our authority comes in.”

In a statement to CBS News, Boyett explained more about the proposal, which is set to start construction this summer: “in short, we will return (Neptune Pass) to the flow of 2018, before it began rapidly expanding in 2019.

A satellite image comparison of Neptune Pass by NASA showed how the it had widened overtime between 2019 and 2023.

With 40 million metric tons of exports from New Orleans traveling down the Mississippi River each year, Boyett says the region is the largest shipping channel in the U.S., which requires a careful balance of addressing the saltwater threat and drinking water needs, while also ensuring the river is accessible to ships. 

That’s why Boyett says the Corps is investing $20 million on a five-year study that has three years to go to analyze the entire Mississippi River from top to bottom. One significant section of the Lower Mississippi River Comprehensive Management Study will examine the best long-term solutions to the saltwater intrusion phenomenon.

“Today, we are evaluating the large suite of alternatives to determine which to carry forward in the study or which may need their own study to determine feasibility,” Boyett said. 

But Lt. Governor Nungesser says southern Louisiana doesn’t have time to wait for researchers to finish the study. 

“People ought to be outraged,” Nungesser said of the corps’ response thus far. 

Byron Marinovich, the owner of Black Velvet Oyster Bar & Grill, a local restaurant in Plaquemines Parish, said he won’t be waiting around. He says the salt has corroded his restaurant appliances, killed his plants, and led to rips his clothing, among other issues. 

“We’re looking to move,” Marinovich said. “Not having clean water is really like at the top of the list.”

Marinovich said he recently had to buy a new ice machine for a third time in 15 years, with the latest one costing him about $5,600.

But unlike the restaurateur, Jurisch said he’s staying put.  

“I’m not moving, this is my home,” he said.

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) – A new Miss Mississippi’s Teen was crowned Sunday in Vicksburg.

Avery McNair, a senior who is graduating from Simpson Academy next week, says she is thrilled to begin the journey of representing this state at Miss America’s Teen.

This is the 20th year for Miss Mississippi’s Teen program.

Twenty-one delegates competed for the title in Vicksburg on Sunday.

After the Top 11 candidates were announced, each of them competed in Fitness, Evening Wear, On Stage question and Talent. A

very McNair, Miss Madison County, played piano.

McNair said, “You never think its gonna be you, and then I finally got my opportunity and I wanted to embrace every single thing and I’m just so blessed to be here.”

McNair was fourth alternate to Brooke Bumgarner, who placed second in Miss America’s Teen and was the first Miss Mississippi’s Teen to win an evening wear preliminary in the national competition.

Bumgarner said, “I came home second alternate for Miss America’s Teen but I came home to the greatest state in the nation and that’s something I said in my first interview with you as Miss Mississippi’s Teen. Its something that I’ll believe for the rest of my life. That’s something that every Miss Mississippi’s Teen has to have a good understanding of – is that she is representing such a great group of people and I wouldn’t want to represent any other state and I hope she knows that, that she knows the value of serving Mississippi.”

The New Miss Mississippi’s Teen is now preparing to represent this state on the national stage.

McNair said, “I’m already in game mode, so I say just keep working hard and keep working harder every single day and I’m so excited to go represent Mississippi.”

McNair, who also wins a 10-thousand dollar scholarship, will be making public appearances throughout the state. She wants to share her Service Initiative, Let’s All Be Prepared: Emergency Preparedness for Kids.

“I partnered with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency my last two years of competing. My first house was hit by an EF-2 tornado and then we were hit again five years later and that destroyed that same house and so I learned from those experiences that I not only want to change lives, but save them,” said McNair.

This year’s fourth alternate was Miss Metro Jackson Chloe Braxton, 3rd Runner Up Anna Holly, Miss Queen City.

Second Alternate, Madalyn Sullivan, Miss Lafayette County and first runner up for the second year in a row, Miss Capital City Blake Hart.

McNair says she will attend Mississippi State University in the fall.

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USDA letter on SNAP benefits likely not to impact Mississippi

After a recent volley of requests from local leaders across the state to establish annual state funding for the Public Employment Retirement System of Mississippi, the PERS Board of Trustees is reiterating that concern to Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

On Wednesday, April 23, the board voted to direct PERS Executive Director Ray Higgins to send Reeves a letter pleading with him to in the upcoming special session include a proposal to establish recurring funding for the state retirement system, which currently had $26.5 billion in unfunded liabilities. The letter was supposed to be written and mailed by end of business on Friday.

PERS funding and reforms became one of several political sticking points during the 2025 Legislative Session between House and Senate leadership. At the midpoint of the session, it seemed PERS was, as a negotiation tactic by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, wedged into another debate over whether to establish a path toward full income tax elimination or phase it down.

The House had earlier proposed taking nearly $100 million in lottery tax revenue currently going to the Mississippi Department of Transportation and giving it to PERS to address the retirement system’s unfunded liabilities. The proposal was early in the session placed into a huge House tax restructure bill that sought to eliminate the income tax, restructure sales tax revenues to cities and raise the gas tax.

The Senate didn’t take to it and proposed its own tax cut bill without a PERS funding element, opting instead to restructure public employee benefits via other legislation. The House later killed those proposals as well.

Local leaders call for PERS funding: Local leaders calling on Legislature to increase Mississippi retirement system funding

As a result, Hosemann said he would not cut taxes without those retirement benefit reforms. The Senate later released and passed a new “measured” income tax elimination bill that also included controversial PERS benefit reforms. What Senate leadership didn’t know was that the bill included several typos that sped up the rate of income tax elimination faster than intended.

The House, realizing what happened, took it and passed it anyway, hoping to use it as leverage for several other legislative items the Senate had previously killed. Reeves later signed the bill into law.

One of those legislative items, House Speaker Jason White, R-West, said during the session was annual PERS funding.

As a result of the political drama that ensued and bled into state budget talks, leadership on both sides left PERS funding, as well as the $7 billion state budget, on the cutting room floor.

This leaves it up to Reeves to call a special session to pass a budget before June 30, when the state’s current fiscal year ends, but also an opening to discuss other political items he may want lawmakers to address.

Reeves in an interview with reporters in early April did not disclose what he was specifically looking to tack onto the special session, but he did not rule out anything out.

MS SNAP program likely to remain unimpacted by USDA letter

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a letter to state agencies overseeing SNAP benefit programs, stating it would review those states that do not require certain beneficiaries of the program to work.

A spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Human Services, which oversees Mississippi’s SNAP program, said the state would likely remain unaffected by a federal government review or the letter.

On April 17, the USDA issued a letter reminding states that did not have an active work requirement that abled bodied adults without dependents, or ABAWDs, should be working or taking steps toward employment.

“Many states have abused the system by requesting work requirement waivers,” said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in the letter. “Today marks the start of a new era for SNAP — prioritizing work, career and technical education, and volunteering rather than idleness, excess spending, and misapplication of the law.”

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MDHS spokesperson Mark Jones told the Clarion Ledger that the state’s SNAP program would likely remain unimpacted due to an already active work requirement imposed by the state on AWADs.

SNAP benefits, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, are benefits issued to help low-income individuals and families purchase food. The benefits, supplied electronically, can be used like cash at approved stores buy food items.

Of all the beneficiaries of Mississippi’s program as of March, 22% of those receiving SNAP assistance are AWADs, Jones said. The work requirement generally requires beneficiaries to work 80 hours per month to maintain eligibility, unless they become exempt from it. Those receiving benefits can also participate in a work program called SNAP E&T to satisfy the work requirement.

USDA already annually reviews state’s SNAP programs. In addition, the federal agency also provides approvals of waivers to forego the work requirement in special circumstances.

Grant McLaughlin covers the Legislature and state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.