How Louisiana missed a large oil spill

One issue that's come up repeatedly since I launched this website seven years ago has been the multiple failings of Louisiana's state environmental regulators, especially when it comes to reining in the state's powerful oil and natural gas interests. For decades, under both Republican and Democratic governors, the regulatory agencies in Baton Rouge haven't been up to snuff. Sometimes the problem appeared to be a lack of interest in aggressively pursuing big campaign contributors. Other times the failure to stop polluters or to clean up dumping sites seemed more a consequence of incompetence or under-staffing, as various administrations placed little or no emphasis on filling vacancies with the best people, or filling them at all. In fact, five years ago things got so bad -- punctuated by problems at ExxonMobil's giant refinery near Baton Rouge, where air pollution emergencies went unpunished while residents went unwarned of the possible consequences of breathing the air -- that state environmental groups like the Louisiana Bucket Brigade pleaded with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to come in and take over the state Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ. That didn't happen; however, in 2015 voters did hand over the power of state government from former ...