User:Amberzeise/sandbox

I went through and edited but I saved a word doc of the older version.

Fix background -- (Frances) -- moved to live Wiki page

In the 1830s, the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe's ancestors moved to Isle de Jean Charles to escape the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears. By 1910, the island had grown from a total of 16 families to a total of 77 families. Traditionally, the population of Jean Charles sustained themselves through fishing, oyster farming, trapping and subsistence farming. In the 1930s, a missionary grade school on the mainland was built for the nearby indigenous peoples. Then in 1959, Daigleville Indian High School in Houma, 25 miles inland from the Isle de Jean Charles, became the first Indigenous high school in Luisiana. Until 1953, when the road that connects the island to the mainland was built, the tribe could only commute inland by boat. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the road traveled through open waters, it was extremely susceptible to flooding and erosion, and frequently became uncrossable. In addition, in the 1940s, companies began off shore oil drilling projects and dredging near the island, which contributed to the erosion of the island and island road.

The Isle de Jean Charles was remembered to be over around 5 miles wide and 11 miles long, but today it has shrunk to 1/4 miles wide and 2 miles long. The causes of land loss have been both natural and man made. Hurricanes, such as Katrina in 2005, flooded the area with salt water, ruining homes and causing land subsidence. Rising sea levels also majorly contributed, and continue to contribute, to land loss. Devastating man made disturbances such as dams and levees as well as the dredging of canals for shipping and oil pipelines all eroded the marshland to almost bare nothingness. Additionally. these disturbances have decreased the plant and animal biodiversity in the marshland which has negatively impacted the tribe's quality of life. As a result, most of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw members who could afford to move off the island did so. The dispersal of their tribal community disrupted their customs, traditions, and culture. Recent coastal restoration efforts have not been able to salvage the island. Additionally, The Army Corps of Engineers left the Isle de Jean Charles out of levee projects which left the land even more vulnerable to natural disasters than the other surrounding areas. In the early 2000s only about 25 families remained on the island and the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw's Chief Albert Naquin began tireless efforts to relocate the entire community to save the tribe's culture and traditions. In 2016, over a decade later, the tribe was finally rewarded with a partial victory.

Before the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw's tribe's victory, an informative and award winning documentary, Cant Stop The Water, was fillmed in 2013 about the community's on going environmental hardships struggles.[1]

Environmental Impact of Oil and Gas Production (Owen)

Louisiana’s Terrebonne Parish, in which the Isle de Jean Charles is situated, has been and continues to be a prime location for oil extraction and production. (http://www.drillingedge.com/louisiana/terrebonne-parish)  Oil and gas production corporations have massive influence in the costal communities of Southern Louisiana, with around 90% of land in the Terrebonne Parish belonging to non-local manufacturing companies. (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/vol4.pdf)

In the late 1920s, the Texas based Oil Corporation Texaco began to explore the bayous and marshlands of Louisiana in search of new sources of oil. (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/vol4.pdf) To facilitate this endeavor, land leases were negotiated between Texaco (and other oil extraction enterprises), the Louisiana Land & Exploration Company, and the State of Louisiana. Oil was first discovered in the Terrebonne Parish in 1929.  Texaco and other groups quickly monopolized on this discovery. (http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blog/vol4.pdf)

Oil and natural gas extraction and production rapidly expanded in the Terrebonne Parish and other coastal communities of Southern Lousiana, reaching an all-time high in the 1960s and 1970s. Peak production reached 31,520,394 Barrel units of oil and 550, 018, 432 million cubic feet of gas in 1977. The OPEC Embargo of 1973 and 1974 greatly influenced this boom, as domestic sources of oil production were particularly desirable and extremely valuable. Oil and gas production levels have steadily fallen since their peak in the late 1970s. In 2014, 3,260,362 Barrel units of oil and 31,100,655 million cubic feet of gas were produced in the Terrebonne Parish. (http://www.drillingedge.com/louisiana/terrebonne-parish)

In order to facilitate the extraction and transportation of oil and natural gas, the Houma Navigation Canal was built. This waterway connected the Terrebonne Parish’s largest and only city, Houma, to the Gulf of Mexico and was completed in 1962. This man-made waterway has been thought to have directly contributed to the degradation of the wetlands of southern Louisiana, especially those in the Terrebonne Parish. (https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1127/pdf/OF08-1127_508.pdf)

Higher levels of water salinity from the adjacent bay and the increase of artificial waterways, pipelines, and other smaller navigation canals have seriously exacerbated the degradation of the wetlands east of the Houma Navigation Canal, where the Isle de Jean Charles is located. (https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1127/pdf/OF08-1127_508.pdf) The island is itself entrenched in numerous oil fields that continue to be utilized by oil manufactures. Construction and development of oil-rigs and pipelines continue to disrupt the geography of the wetlands. (Movie and http://worldmap.harvard.edu/data/geonode:oil_and_gas_fields_in_louisiana_tqe)

Conference/activism - national disaster resilience competition - Amber

Multiple interventions and solutions have been explored by the residents of the island and politicians (Katz, 2003). Given that many areas of the Louisiana wetlands are disappearing to erosion, the Army Corps of Engineers are building a large levee system to prevent help prevent flooding for over 110,000 residents (Katz, 2003). However, the costs required to protect Isle de Jean Charles with this levee system were deemed too high and they were not included (Katz, 2003). Chief Albert Naquin, the leader of the community, has expressed that leaving their community out of the levee plan demonstrated that their lives and community matter less to the government than those they are choosing to protect (Kratz, 2003). Attempting to gain federal recognition as a Native American tribe is one strategy employed by the community to demand to be included in the levee system (Kratz, 2003). The process of being federally recognized is notoriously difficult and lengthy as the federal government considers a set of criteria a group must meet to become a tribe and received the benefits (Talamo, 2016). Though it is known that the tribe located on the island to escape the trail of tears, the burden of truth is on the tribes to provide proof of their existence and cohesion since 1900 (Talamo, 2016). This struggle continues as federal recognition remains a hopeful option for receiving resources and autonomy (Katz, 2003).

Another option for the residents of Isle de Jean Charles is to relocate (Resettlement as a Resilience Strategy, 2015). Though many of the residents do not want to leave their longterm home, others see it as the best option to keep their community and traditions in tact (Resettlement as a Resilience Strategy, 2015). A big barrier to successful resettlement is funding, as the community is relatively poor and relocation expensive (Resettlement as a Resilience Strategy, 2015). Recently, the funding has been given to the community to begin relocation (Gonzalez, 2016); however, it may not be adequate for the relocation and resettling of the entire community which is estimated to cost over $8 million (Kratz, 2003). Recently, a report was released detailing the current options for relocation as well as plans for community relocation to guide state-level efforts called "Resettlement as a Resilience Strategy" (2015). This report explains that at the time of its publishing, the only way for families to receive funding for relocation was money from selling their damaged homes back to the state, which left no options for families or individuals that do not own property, leaving the most vulnerable without funds to leave (Resettlement as a Resilience Strategy, 2015). The report emphasizes the importance of community buy-in as well as content evaluation of efforts in hopes to simultaneously use the Isle de Jean Charles as a case study for successful relocation efforts that may guide future resettlements (Resettlement as a Resilience Strategy, 2015).

Donald Trump and Climate Change (David)

Trump has promised to make one of his top priorities and focus on increasing job opportunities during his administration. Since President Trump began his campaign, he has continued to stand by his skepticism regarding environmental issues and assert publicly that climate change is in fact not a real issue, but only a Chinese hoax". He has disregarded most claims that many scientist around the world have agreed on, regarding to the recent phenomenon of "global warming (climate change)". (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/politics/trump-white-house-website.html). Numerous experts have collected data illustrating that it has been in fact getting warmer every year for the past 100 years (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2486.2002.00451.x/full) . Climate change is in progress and not showing signs of slowing down during the Trump Administration era, it is likely it will only worsen; also of course increasing effects of environmental impacts to populations all around the US. According to recent studies, climate change is one of the main reasons sea levels continue to rise and many communities near the coast such as the Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana are being affected and displacing the natives/population from their lands. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/politics/trump-white-house-website.html)

Immediately after Trump took office, his administration began to eliminate most of the environmental information that was available to the public from the official EPA website, as well as changing/eliminating policies that aligned with president Barack Obama's environmentalist priorities. Many scientist and environmental advocates now fear that the data collected over the years will be eventually deleted and lost for good from the EPA website during Trump's term. The EPA official website is responsible for publishing some of the most accurate data in the world of recent atmospheric temperature trends, sea level rising, and green house gas emissions. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/politics/trump-white-house-website.html)

Trump has began dismantling the recent US environmental policies that have been implemented for decades. One of Trump's goals is to back out of the Paris Agreement, which would essentially prevent Barack Obama's implementation of his plan to help the US, and world, live in a less polluted planet by the year 2050. The United States proposed the agreement, and is one of the three highest polluters in the globe, following China and India. The Paris agreement consist of over 180 countries that have pledged to follow in the footsteps of the US in attempting to reduce their impact on the globe's climate (http://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/666). Many top scientist around the world fear that Trump's actions could have serious catastrophic effects in the near future not only in the US, but around the world due to recent high levels of co2 in the atmosphere which are causing hotter years as we move forward. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/us/politics/donald-trump-climate-change.html )

In January, a few days after being in office, Donald Trump announced his plans to sign an executive order to rollback the Clean water rule. If Trump successfully eliminates this policy, he will allow draining of of wetlands and streams into bigger bodies of water. Furthermore, this executive order would allow for further pollution of large bodies of water and make it more difficult to access clean drinkable water, especially for those living in poverty. The people living near wetlands and the coastal lands will also be in increased danger rising water levels and ultimately losing their land to climate change. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/28/us/politics/trump-epa-clean-water-climate-change.html)