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But I would say in the next five years to ten years and maybe longer, it’s going to be a that’s going to be a long haul. The controversy over carbon capture and storage. It’s normal for the river
To kind of peak around the month of May and then it tends to dip around October. Shallow depths in the Mississippi. It’s probably not going to change anything in a practical way. Eight Changes to the Constitution of Boat pre homecoming celebrations ended in panic last night.
Nine people were shot at a frat house party. Seven were taken to the hospital, though police don’t say if any of them have life threatening injuries. We’re not certain of that. As of Friday morning, it’s unclear why the shooting happened or if any arrests have been made.
Moving on to the latest phase of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. It’s expected to help nearly 43 million people and he announced the latest news on Monday. Here’s what you do. You go online to apply for loan forgiveness and you can sign up for the program on student aid dot gov.
Remember though, you have to have federal student loans to qualify. Make at least 20,000 but less than $125,000 a year. You have until December 23rd to apply. Carbon capture and storage has become big news of late. In Louisiana and around the globe, in fact, it’s a way
To reduce carbon emissions from our industrial plants and is considered a key to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. I talked with two LSU environmental and energy scientists who told me it’s really the only hope to reach net zero by 2050. I think there’s a lot of information and maybe
Misinformation about what it is. So carbon capture is taking CO2, carbon dioxide from the exhaust of some industrial facility here in Louisiana. Some of those, like the most important industrial facilities that we have, are our fertilizer production, our petrochemical production, things like that. And they produce a lot of CO2.
In carbon capture, you capture that CO2 and you inject it underground into usually a sandstone reservoir. Usually those formations would be something like 5000 feet or more below the surface. So it’s a pretty safe process. There are kind of local environmental risks associated with it. Like, for instance, wetland
Loss or pipeline transportation risks, things like that. But it’s pretty safe. And without it, we can’t meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. So the Paris Agreement requires us to be carbon neutral by 2050, and there’s just no way to do that without carbon capture and storage. You mentioned wetlands. Loss. Yeah.
How would that be? A problem? So when they build a pipeline, so imagine you’ve got a facility, let’s say it’s an ammonia production facility that releases a lot of CO2. And you want to take that to a place where you can inject it. Maybe that’s ten miles away, maybe that’s 15 miles away.
But if there’s a wetlands on that route, you’re going to have to put a pipe, you’re going to put a pipeline through that wetland. And potentially, well, you would destroy that part of the wetland. And there’s already been enough of that. There’s been a lot of of wetland destruction in Louisiana. You’re mentioning
Injecting it into land. What about water? Yeah. So there’s also a lot of interest in injecting under water, so much like the injection into a land reservoir. Injecting into water would go well under the surface of the ocean. So there’s a lot of interest in piping it out to the Gulf of Mexico
And injecting it into some of those same sorts of sandstone formations. Carbon capture is is one means of essentially addressing this challenge that we have of climate change. It’s not the largest potential solution to the problem, but it’s one of many.
And as I often explain to my students, there is no silver bullet, because if there were, we would have already pulled the trigger on that. Right. What makes us unique and I think the reason why this area has become more of a ground zero within the United States
For that application has been that it’s probably one of the few ways that we can address our climate change challenge within an industrial framework. It’s very easy, for instance, in power generation to substitute a natural gas generator for solar or for wind.
What is less easy is going in and substituting a lot of these big combustion processes that we all see up and down the river with electricity. And renewable energy. We just don’t have that kind of scope in that activity. So if we’re going to maintain that industrial activity,
What are we going to do to help combat climate change? At the same time, we can’t maintain the status quo. Right. We’re going have to do something. We can’t get to renewables or other types of applications. So what’s it going to be? And carbon capture is one of those.
A lot of people will tell you, well, let’s just do solar. Well, that’s an option. That might be an option one day, but I can’t generate enough electricity to displace 3000 degree Celsius steam. Right. It’s not there today. It’s not there today.
I don’t know of any electric boiler out there that can do that. Now, we’re working on that and with a lot of technological innovation, I think greater incentives on these things, we’ll get there. But I would say in the next five years to ten years and maybe longer,
It’s going to be at that’s going to be a long haul. And getting there. And next week, we’re going to hear from the CEO of a water technology company and his approach to carbon capture and storage, which he also says is going to be essential to reach that climate accord
Standard of net zero. The Mississippi River is reaching historic lows in other parts of the country, stolen commerce and boat travel and Louisiana. Cities like New Orleans are combating saltwater intrusion. Barry Conn, the state climatologist, explains why water levels are so low and consequences of the shallow depths. So all over the country,
People have been talking about a drought and how river levels are dropping. And the Mississippi River is one of those that is experiencing lower levels of water. Why is that happening? Well, there’s drought going on all over the. Certainly the western United States. And that drought is gradually creeping eastward.
And it’s overwhelming the you know, the Great Plains, it’s affecting Louisiana now. We have some drought in Louisiana at the moment and it’s continuing its march towards the east. New England is having some drought issues as well. So really, almost the entire country is having some issues
Where we’re just not getting enough rain right now is the big problem. Now out west, they’re looking at, you know, many years, two decades long issue, which is some of the problems we’re hearing on Lake Mead and things like that.
Here we’re looking at stuff that’s going on over just the last few months. It just hasn’t we haven’t had enough rain across the Mississippi River basin. And as a result, we’re seeing record low flows at some locations like like Memphis, for example.
And here in Baton Rouge, we’re running I think the rivers are about five and a half feet below where it’s supposed to be at this particular date. And it’s causing some issues. Navigation is an issue. Down in New Orleans, they’re concerned about the saltwater
Wedge coming up from the Gulf of Mexico at the bottom of the river, which could ultimately affect the, you know, the drinking water for the city. So it has a whole host of implications. You know, the biggest of which, though, internationally, is the trade on the Mississippi River.
All this commerce, there’s all sorts of agricultural products that move in, in and out of here internationally, as well as energy and other things as well. So it’s a this this could ultimately affect the supply chains all across the United States and internationally as well.
I believe some experts are predicting that that’s already happening. There have been some holdups that have started to dredge the water in certain places to make sure that it’s actually deep enough for big boats to be able to travel through. But whenever you hear the word drought, it is very scary.
And I’m sure a lot of people are really worried about what the long term impacts are. Are we going to be experiencing this dip in water levels for a long time? Well, I’d say probably not. I think this is just kind of a flash in the pan.
This is it’s going to take place for the next few weeks, maybe the next few months. Eventually, this is very likely to recover. In fact, by the time we get into the spring, you know, the water levels are generally higher in the spring and you know, it’s going to rebound.
So I’m not too concerned about the Mississippi River at this point. You know, we don’t have issues like they have out West where they really have a lack of water. We tend to, at least in Louisiana, have an overabundance of water. We’re usually trying to get rid of water.
So this is not normally one of our problems. Now on the Mississippi River, you so, you know, it’s normal for the river to kind of peak around the month of May with you no higher river levels and then it tends to dip around October.
So we’re in that normal stage where the river is is at a lower point. It’s just that it’s even lower than it’s supposed to be at this juncture, which is causing all these navigation problems. So that’s essentially the issue right now. Well, we’re both standing out here shivering because it’s pretty cold outside.
And like you were saying, a lot of the reason why the water levels are dropping is because of the rain and the lack thereof. But is it going to get worse before it gets better? Because we’re in the fall winter season right now.
I think the best way to answer that is the river is is reasonably responsive to when you when you get some heavy rainfall. For example, if if we put some heavy rainfall across the Midwest, across Kansas and Oklahoma and Missouri, that water would take about two weeks to finally get down here
And have an effect on the river levels. So if we can just get return to some kind of normal semblance of our rainfall climatology, the river will rebound relatively quickly, quickly on the order of weeks to months. So it’s not like we’re going to be stuck in this pattern because of this.
We’re not going to be stuck in this for years on end, trying to dig our way out like it could happen or is happening out in the western US, out on the Colorado River and other places in the western United States. We certainly should be concerned, obviously, but the overall pattern
On the Mississippi River has actually been increasing runoff and increasing river levels. And we’ve had the Bonner Carey Spillway open a couple of times a couple of years ago. And and, you know, high river levels have been more of our problem than low river levels.
But, you know, mother Nature is constantly throwing us some new twists and turns. And this is just the latest. And right now, it happens to be drought. But but this, too, shall pass. And have you ever gone to vote
And when you get too close the curtain and pull the lever, what you see do you? Looks like it could be a martian. Well, we’ve got voting coming up very soon and you’re likely going to know the candidates. But would you know the eight proposed amendments to the state constitution?
You’re in luck tonight because we’ve got cable president Barry Irwin and Louisiana Budget Project Director John Mueller here with us. You both were featured on the PA Public Affairs Research Council webinar last week. So I want to ask you to come in here
And explain a little bit about these eight amendments, proposed amendments. Let’s go with number one. I’ll ask you about this one. Larger stock investments for trust funds. Well, this is a pretty simple amendment, actually. And, you know, I think people can be forgiven for asking why it belongs in the Constitution,
But it applies to seven state trust funds managed by the state treasurer. And some of these, the Millennium Trust Fund is probably the one voters will know the best which which is the tobacco settlement dollars. And it lets them invest up to 65% of that money
In the stock market right now, and it’s 35%. The supporters of this say that this is going to produce higher yields over time. So the state will have more money to invest in education and health care and some of the things that this these trust funds pay for.
But, of course, the stock market comes with bigger risks. Sure. Right. So so that’s all that amendment. That’s the other side of that. Okay. Well, let’s look at amendment number two. Barry, I’ll ask you about this one. And that’s increasing property tax exemptions for veterans with disabilities. Well, we’ve.
Already got some property tax exemptions for veterans and other groups of people. What this does, though, is enhances those exemptions for property taxes, particularly for totally disabled veterans. It would mean they pay no property taxes on their property. And if you have a different level of disability,
If this passes, you would effectively get a larger homestead exemption. That’s kind of the way it works depending on the level of your disability. So basically for disabled veterans at various levels, it would be a tax break for them on their property tax.
And what do people say would be the downside of this? I think the downside usually is the same on all of these types of exemptions that it lowers or reduces the sure the tax base in the local communities. And it’s something to you know, a lot of times
People feel like it makes the local governments more dependent on the state. And so that’s kind of the argument. It won’t really affect that many people. A huge group. Okay. Number three, amendment. Number three, political activity for civil service workers. When family members run for office.
Well, this basically says that if you are a civil servant, a teacher, a rank and file government employee, maybe a police officer, a firefighter, and you have a direct relative who runs for office, then you can appear in their campaign advertisements and you can go to campaign events with them.
Right now, the Civil Service laws of the state, you get a lot of protections if you’re in the civil service, but you’re also supposed to stay out of politics. And this just makes an exception for this for for direct relatives. The problem with this amendment is that it’s a pretty broad
Definition of what constitutes immediate family. It’s about almost two dozen categories of people. And the other thing to keep in mind about this, this isn’t something the civil servants were asking for. This is really the politicians who want their relatives
To be able to campaign, you know, go out on the stump with them. And so, again, you know, these civil service protections are here for a reason. But I think I can certainly understand if you’re running for the legislature, your wife’s a teacher, you might want her in a campaign advertisement.
Okay. All right. Okay, good. Thank you for that. And number four, amendment number four, waiving charges for water use if infrastructure is damaged. This one is another one that kind of came from a constituent type situation. The story was told in the legislature about a guy that had some property
And there was water on there. I think it was a bayou and somebody came through there or whatever and they damaged the water line there. And he got a huge water bill at the end of the month and he said, Well, look, this wasn’t my fault. I don’t think I should pay.
So we went to the water board or whatever it was and found out that the Constitution actually does not allow that type of thing. We have a language that’s been in there for a very long time about donating things of value. Water is something of value
That local and state governments can’t sort of waive fees on. And that type of thing. So what this would say is that if somehow a pipeline or whatever it is, the water line is damaged on your property, that you’re responsible for, but it’s not your fault.
You can go and maybe the water board or whatever it would be can waive the penalties or that that that high rate. There are some problems with that, I think, because anybody could say that, you know, my pipes busted. It wasn’t. My fault.
I don’t want to pay my water bill, but that’s what that would do. All right. Amendment that number five would be local authority over property tax rates. Yeah. Well, we probably don’t have enough time to fully explain what we just does. I would refer you to our website.
This is something that local governments are very supportive of because it gives them a little bit more flexibility after an assessment to decide whether to roll forward property tax millage is essentially whether to raise your property taxes after your property has been reassessed. So so it doesn’t necessarily raise anybody’s taxes.
It just gives local governments a little bit more flexibility. Okay. Thank you very much. The next one pertains only to if you live in New Orleans. Orleans Parish in particular, that’s number six. It’s property tax assessment increases in Orleans Parish very well.
As a lot of people know, property values have gone up exponentially in New Orleans. And so that means higher property tax bills. A few years ago, a couple of years ago, actually, we passed something statewide that limited the amount you had to pay to
If it went up 50% or more, you could pay it off over four years. This takes it another step forward and says that in the event that property values go up more than 10%, you can’t have a property tax bill go up more than 10%.
So would it be 10% for whatever period of time? It applies only to Orleans Parish, but voters statewide have to vote to approve the amendment before the vote in Orleans could go into effect. Got it. Okay. Amendment number seven is one that you may definitely have to refer to the website on
Many of them. Limits on involuntary servitude. There’s language in this that gets odd. This is a very well-meaning and probably the most controversial of the amendments. The original intent of the author was to get language on slavery out of the state constitution, to say definitively
In our state constitution that we ban slavery and involuntary servitude. So it was still in the constitution. It was still well, there was a ban on slavery, but it allowed involuntary servitude. And so they wanted to kind of get that language, the involuntary servitude language out. It was changed during the legislative process.
So now the author of this amendment says he plans to vote against it. I think the bottom line on this amendment is it’s probably not going to change anything in a practical way. But there is real symbolic weight to this. And there are a lot of folks
In the civil rights world who say we really support this because we don’t want to send the message that Louisiana doesn’t want to outlaw slavery. But this is a very complicated amendment. I suggest people go to the website and read more about this. All right. Let’s go to number eight.
The last one, property tax assessments for certain people with disabilities. Basically, this is another instance where we have a fairly lucrative thing. It’s called a special assessment for people over 65, for people with disabilities, where it can basically freeze their property assessment so their property taxes
Would not go up year after year as properties are reassessed. Caveat is that you can’t make more than $100,000 a year in household income. Right now, people with disabilities are required to certify or recertify every year that their income is not above $100,000 so they can qualify for that tax break.
This would take that recertification, annual recertification out would make that unnecessary and they would just get it automatically. Guys, thanks so much for being here. Very Cliff Notes version and much more can be found on each of the websites. Cable for one thing, that’s cable dot org.
Also LA budget dot org and part Louisiana dot org. And it’s no secret that black Greek organizations are beneficial to college students, but they were also instrumental in building up a community of middle class African-Americans through the Civil Rights movement. This episode of Crossing Over Black Greek Life explains
Just how the Divine Nine helped black communities nationwide. You know why? Why conflict can stop life growth. Well, it’s true. These organizations breed greatness. I mean, just look at the legacy. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. Race. But it really doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop.
Yep, that’s right. Martin Luther King, Jr. Was an alpha. But it doesn’t just stop there. A lot of his entourage were black Greeks, too. Black sororities also had their hand in shaping the future. These organizations helped shape and build black society. To figure out how, I reached out to Ryan Harris. Hey. Hey.
All right. Nice to finally meet you in person. Yes. Looking forward to it. All right. So where are we at right now? Right now we have the number Covered Capital Foundation house, the home of the Lambda Kappa Kappa chapter of Omega Sapphire, fraternity and corporate. All right.
So what are we going to see on the inside? Something exciting. The frat house. Right? Ryan is the vice president of the Greater Baton Rouge Panhellenic Council. And he’s an Omega. What is this? Oh, that’s our email. The emblem of the fraternity. And then this is your chapter name. Chapter name.
The member Kappa Kappa is the name of the chapter here in Baton Rouge in our founding December 7th, 1995. To Ryan, the real value of black Greek life is the chance to serve and make professional connections. You’ve mentioned it over and over again. It’s about service and it’s about community.
How are these organizations helping the community, helping to build up black people? We all have some type of form of mentorship scholarship efforts in WAC, up blood drives and you name it. We may call it different names, but they are all the same thing. What about in a professional sense?
It’s funny you say that because of my employment, I actually did get a little help. I know such and such here. It’s just a networking tool. And you would do that for someone that you really called a friend. But we’re doing the best we can. If somebody needs a ride to go vote.
We have not just voter registration, but we trying to carpool. Get people there. Just assist people where they fall short. Wait, wait. I’m going to pause here again. Our expert has some great insight on how black Greek life helped contribute to the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was
An important time in the history of black fraternal organizations, particularly because most of the leaders of the Civil rights movement were also members of the Divine Nine organizations. For example, Jesse Jackson could really go to different places and leverage not only his membership in Omega
Sapphire fraternity, but also his relationship with the church. You have someone like Bayard Rustin who organized a march on Washington, also a member of omega sci fi. So you had many people in these groups that had the connections to their organization and to the church that were able to leverage
Those opportunity, these into a meaningful civil rights movement. So, hi, I’m Barbara Carpenter. How are you? I’m good. So where are we at? I’ve always passed by this place, but I’ve never been really inside. This is. This is. I headquarters, close to 85 here in Baton Rouge.
Got all the nice pretty blue, just like a Jackie O. Thank you. Barbara Carpenter remembers when frats were organizing during the civil rights movement. Barbara is a Zeta in a Louisiana state representative. The opportunity to serve for a lifetime is the main reason she joined her sorority.
She says that’s the major distinction between the Divine Nine and white Greek organizations. I think the major difference between black Greek organizations compared to the white organizations is that of service normally. Typically also say white Greek life is fun. When you’re in college, it’s more social.
Black Greek life extends beyond the college years. So once you graduate with precepts, for instance, of being service, sisterhood, scholarship, we focus on the service and the sisterhood side of it more than the social side. Why do you think that is? There were not many organizations that really they could really belong to
And focus to do what needed to be done to help people in the community. And so the black Greeks came into effect. Some people would say that black Greek life is really responsible for building up a middle class, especially, you know, your generation signed when you joined. Yeah.
Well, you have to understand, in the sixties, that was the height of civil rights activities as well. I don’t remember learning about that in school. Well, you. Had to have some people who were brave enough to step out of a dance club and take the lead, and often times
Those people belong to sororities and fraternities. Black Greek life helped members meet the community where they were. If neighborhoods didn’t have anyone to explain how to apply for a voter’s registration, they organize meetings. If the community was struggling with literacy test, they set up classes and book drives.
And what about when you were first joining the organization in 1968? What was your sorority doing at the time to help with what was going on in the world? Most of the focus was on education. Teaching people how to read, which was something that was not very common.
Black Greeks are still focused on professional growth. The Small Business Administration announced a new partnership with the National Panhellenic Council to close the wealth gap through black entrepreneurship. The goal is to teach financial literacy where African-Americans seem to struggle, which isn’t that far off
From what these organizations set out to do from the start. To say that we’ve been in existence for 100 plus years says a lot. So the success of what black Greek organizations have, I see it continuing. The only thing is that we have to be sure
That we pass on what skills we have, what trainings we have, and what contacts we have to the younger generation so that they too can pick it up and move forward with it. Because that’s the only way it’s the black middle class is going to survive and grow.
And everyone, that’s our show for this week. Remember, you can watch anything lvb any time. Wherever you are with our LTV PBS app. You can catch lvb News and Public Affairs shows as well as other Louisiana programs you’ve come to enjoy over the years.
And please like us on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram. For everyone. Louisiana Public Broadcasting. I’m Andre Mora and I’m Care. Thanks here for next time. That’s the state we’re in.
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