Dear editor:
For many years, the Gulf Coast has enjoyed the riches gained from exploration and development by the oil and gas industry. Refineries meant good-paying jobs, offshore drilling and exploration required even more highly skilled jobs that increased the revenues of those that came down there to join in the largesse offered by the oil and gas industry. There seemed to be no downside.
The chickens have come home to roost. The cost has hit people where they live.
Flooding that is blamed on the 500-year flood plan that is used extensively when calculating risk by the insurance companies is not the fault of climate change. We can continue business as usual. That is if you ask the oil and gas industry that is meeting right now at the Super Dome in New Orleans to buy up more offshore leases from our government. Forget the BP Horizon incident, which is still and will continue to inflict devastation on the environment and natural resources of the Gulf Coast. It won't happen again. We know what to do now to prevent that from happening again.
People around the world, and particularly in Louisiana, understand now the correlation between burning fossil fuels and or drilling for them without concern for the future. The fishing industry has been hardest hit before the flooding. We will only know later after the water recedes how much it has been impacted again by runoff from toxic waste sites in and around the refineries.
The sale of those leases need to stop and I join the people picketing the Super Dome in asking everyone that cares about the future of our planet to join them.
Judy Ladd
Hot Springs
Editorial on 08/25/2016