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Everywhere you look in SOUTHERN LOUISIANA (SoLa) there’s water – bayous, swamps, the Mississippi River, the Gulf of Mexico. And everyone in Cajun Country has a water story, or two or three. SoLa’s waterways are also home to the biggest economies in Louisiana – a $70 billion a year oil and gas industry and a $2.4 billion a year fishing business. Both are in the midst of sizable change.

Southern Louisiana has historically had a legion of insidious polluters. At the same time, SoLa has one of America’s most vital and UNIQUE CULTURES; if everyone who lives there has a water story they can also most likely play the accordion, dance, cook an etouffe and hunt and fish.

Louisiana has long been known as both one of our most original and simultaneously most politically corrupt states. One legacy of that corruption is a handful of ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS that has turned Louisiana into America’s toilet bowl:

A DEAD ZONE – the size of New Jersey – that grows each year in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to farming fertilizers sent down from 31 states to the north.

SMALL FISHERMEN squeezed out of business by a variety of pollutions, high fuel prices and international competition.

CYPRESS FORESTS that once stood as a barrier between hurricanes and humans have been clear-cut for garden mulch and profit.

COASTAL EROSION Thanks to man’s failed attempt to reign the Mississippi River, the state loses 25 square miles of coastline each year.

CANCER ALLEY An 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River has been turned over to the petrochemical industry. The risks are great.

TOXIC WASTE Decades of exploration for oil and natural gas has cut 10,000 miles of channels through the wetlands and left a wake of toxic waste in Louisiana’s waters.

OIL SPILLS have long been business as usual in Louisiana, crowned by the ongoing BP nightmare which has focused attention on the region as our worst ecologic disaster escalates.

In SoLa, Louisiana Water Stories, we meet some of the most unique individuals working on each of the issues, giving voice and humanity to these man-made messes. The one-hour documentary captures what is most at risk environmentally as we continue to take the Gulf coast state for granted, while simultaneously reminding us of the culture that binds the region. If these voices are not heard, too soon what remains will all disappear, drowned by pollution, erosion, storms and man’s neglect.

FROM 1932-2000, Louisiana lost nearly 2,000 square miles of wetlands, the equivalent to the state of Delaware.

FIFTY YEARS AGO, Southern Louisiana’s Gulf coast was fifty miles wide; today it’s barely twenty. By 2050, expectations are that another 700 square miles of coastal land will disappear.

HALF OF LOUISIANA’S 4.5 million residents live in the coastal zone, where the issue of wetland loss is literally in everyone’s backyard.

THE $70 BILLION a year oil and gas industry in Louisiana accounts for twenty percent of the state’s gross economic product; eighty percent of all offshore oil platforms in the United States sit off Southern Louisiana’s shores.

THOUSANDS OF MILES OF CANALS have been dug through SoLa’s coastal marshes to aid in the construction and transportation of natural gas and oil. Combined with the century-old levee system that wrongly attempted to rein in the Mississippi River, canals contribute to the state’s erosion problems.

THE DEAD ZONE is created each year by an estimated 83,000 tons of phosphorous and 817,000 tons of nitrogen that wash into the Mississippi from farm fields and river networks of 31 northern states. It all ends up at the mouth of the river in the Gulf of Mexico, creating the world’s first and largest dead zone, currently 8,000 square miles, the size of New Jersey. In the Dead Zone, nothing lives.

GULF OF MEXICO FISHERIES supply more than thirty percent of America’s seafood, including seventy two percent of our shrimp, sixty six percent of our oysters and sixteen percent of commercial fish. As the Dead Zone and oil spill grows, the fishery gets smaller.

TWO HUNDRED PLANTS along the 85-mile industrial corridor along the Mississippi River, linking Baton Rouge and New Orleans, produce twenty five percent of America’s petrochemicals. The stretch is known as Cancer Alley.

THE PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY, at its peak, accounted for one out of every three tax dollars collected by the state and more than 165,000 jobs.The industry also discharged 150,000 tons of pollutants into the air in the form of sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides and hydrocarbons.

LOUISIANA’S WATERWAYS are at risk due to illegal logging, soil erosion, natural gas and oil development, abandoned infrastructure and pollution from chemical plants.

THE ATCHAFALAYA SWAMP is the largest contiguous hardwood forest in North America at 1.4 million acres. It supports more than half of America’s migratory waterfowl, more than 300 species of birds and 100 species of fish.

OUR NATIONAL WILDLIFE is dependant on Louisana’s marshes, serving as nurseries for millions of birds, including wintering grounds for seventy percent of the nation’s migratory waterfowl.

THE BP DISASTER has become arguably the nation’s worst environmental mess to-date, sending millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. As our two-year-in-the-making film concludes, the leak keeps on gushing.

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South Louisiana was once covered by hundreds of thousands of acres of mature bald-cypress swamps. It was seen as an unending supply of cypress timber. By around 1930 there were no timber quality old-growth cypress left to be found. Many of the cypress swamps began to grow back but it takes hundreds of years for cypress trees to fully mature. Levees, flood control systems, canals and other human engineering has permanently altered the hydrology of South Louisiana. These changes in hydrology have made it nearly impossible for new cypress trees to grow from seed and regenerate the cypress swamps that are so iconically linked to the Atchafalaya Basin and South Louisiana. That means, cypress trees in the Basin that are logged now, primarily to make garden mulch, will likely never regrow and will be replaced with lesser quality or invasive species such as chinese tallow and black willow. Read more here.

To truly appreciate the Atchafalaya it is important to experience it first hand. The Basin is an extraordinary place to explore through hiking, paddling, bird-watching, fishing, etc.  Get outside and explore SoLa!

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Since she accepted a position as professor of biology at her alma mater, Southern University in the early 1970s, Ms. Robinson has lived in the small community of Alsen, near Devil’s Swamp. Once an idyllic spot, Alsen was home to many newly freed slaves who, settling there after the Civil War, enjoyed cool, clean water and plentiful harvests. That ended in 1964 when an industrial “borrow” pit was opened in Alsen to dispose of hazardous waste. The area was further fouled by 11 nearby petrochemical plants, a commercial hazardous waste incinerator, and several waste landfills.

Statistics from a 1987 study by the New York Commission of Racial Justice concluded that 50 percent of the petrochemical and hazardous waste companies operating in the south do so in areas of high minority concentration. This environmental racism and the controversy surrounding it are not new, but activism in response to it is.

Ms. Robinson had a clear sense of what needed to be done. Because she would not sacrifice her home, or the health of her family and her community, her battle against environmental racism was begun. With quiet but indefatigable determination, she organized her neighbors, and demanded to be heard.

In 1993, she finally was. That year and in 1994, the Superfund Commission convened hearings bringing together Fortune 500 CEOs, national environmental leaders, legislators, and citizens who lived near at-risk sites. An unlikely advocate, Ms. Robinson emerged during those hearings as a passionate and inspiring voice for change. (see the links below to learn more)

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In 2011, the waste facility formerly run by U.S. Liquids, was purchased by R360 Environmental Solutions.

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In 1938, Margie graduated from Franklinton High School and began working with the Farm Security Administration (later called the Farmers Home Administration). In 1946 she married Bryant Jenkins and in 1951, they moved to the farm where she still lives, today.

The next year, in 1952, Margie and Bryant planted a small field of watermelons as their first cash crop and started a dairy operation which continued until 1996. Three years later, in 1955, as their young family continued to grow, Margie stopped working outside the home in order to be with their children. Their family grew to include five children in total (Frederick, Margie Ann, Timothy, Jeffrey, & Mark).

In 1960, Margie and her husband Bryant began their own nursery – growing and selling ligustrums. They purchased the first 50 acres of her current nursery, followed by an additional 128 acres of tung tree plantation, just across the street. They began integrating more nursery materials into their operation – more ligustrums, azaleas and native azaleas.

In 1974, a small nursery container yard was installed as an addition to their field-grown nursery stock. Two years later, in 1976, Margie commuted to LSU to take a course from Dr. Neil Odenwald, inspiring her to find her life’s work – the cultivation of rare and native plants. In 1977 she returned to work at the nursery, where she remains, today.

Named Outstanding Nurserypersons of the Year 1993 (Bryant and Margie) for their outstanding service to the nursery industry. Recipient of the James A. Foret Award in 2000, given by the Louisiana Nursery Association for service, dedication and outstanding contributions to Louisiana’s ‘Green Industry’. Recipient of the Karlene DeFatta Award in 2002 from the Louisiana Native Plant Society, for accomplishment in conservation, preservation and education of the public in the appreciation and use of native plants. Recipient of the Slater Wight Memorial Award in 2005 from the Southern Nursery Association for her contribution to the advancement of the industry in the south and to the welfare of the Southern Nursery Association – the 50th recipient of this award, and the first woman to hold this distinguished honor. Fellow Awardee of the International Plant Propagators’ Society in 2005 for the Southern Region of North America.

Ms. Margie’s focus, remains, the cultivation of rare, unusual and native plants for the landscape trade, with a special interest in native azaleas. Decades of this work have generated a wealth of respect for Ms. Margie and her late husband, Bryant.

She is nationally known as a long-time authority and breeder of azaleas and other native plants.

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