Louisiana’s saltwater wedge is a slow-motion disaster

Photo credit: Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images. Article by Jake Bittle. Grist – October 3, 2023.

The Mississippi River is a connected system. If farms dump fertilizer into the river’s tributaries in Ohio, that waste ends up in the Gulf of Mexico. If heavy rains make the river’s level rise in Illinois, it puts pressure on flood levees in Arkansas. And if a hot, dry summer sweeps across the Midwest, drying the river out for hundreds of miles downstream, something very strange happens in southern Louisiana. […]

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