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[blogs-by-criddle]

Salt with no Solutions for Southeast Louisiana

The salt water intrusion that is scouring the south is continuing to affect more and more people, businesses, and the economy itself as it continues to travel deeper into our state and communities. Due to decreased freshwater from a plethora of reasons like treatment plants, companies draining millions of freshwater, and occasional drought more salt water is being pulled into the Mississippi in the freshwater's absence. Because of this our communities are being affected economically, socially, and in ways that put the health of the people in danger. 

Big businesses in Louisiana like exxon and water co are being affected tremendously by this salt water crisis. Business and industry not only use water to provide drinking water to its residents but also for industrial purposes like refining oil, cooling machinery, and enhancing petroleum, processes of which require gallons of freshwater a day. Legislation has been made eto lower the daily cap of water pulled from natural reservoirs in an attempt to slow the contamination of salt into our precious natural resources. From 50 million gallons a day to 5 million gallons, a 1000% percent decrease, Not only that the obvious health effects that come with drinking salt water like dehydration and organ damage.

Legislators are doing their best to combat the effects and slow the transmission and of the saltwater intrusion down to the best of their ability. Recently Biden has declared a state of emergency for the southeast fostering a dedication of attention and resources to afflicted areas to mitigate its effects. Not only that, local policy has been made to decrease the pulling from natural reservoirs to slow the salt intrusions into local sources of water.

I believe that for some it is hard to grasp the situations because of the gravity and plethora of issues and changes to lifestyle this intrusion can cause. Not only that some individuals are having issues trusting our legislators and policy makers because they have long since known about the coming salt intrusion, but it took them months to finally bring the attention to this issue that is needed to bring change we need to heal and protect our communities from this issue.

Extra Resources: President declares state of emergency for southeast Louisiana saltwater intrusion | New Orleans CityBusiness

Industrial water use threatens Louisiana capital’s drinking water | Louisiana | The Guardian