ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN:
The Advocate
A strategic plan to decide how to protect the Baton Rouge area's drinking water from potential saltwater intrusion appears to be moving forward, now that a new leader is in charge.
Gary Beard, a former Baton Rouge-area legislator and engineer, took over as full-time director of the Capital Area Ground Water Conservation Commission about a month ago. On Monday, he got commissioners' backing for a four-year plan to pay for most of the $2.3 million in technical work to inform how to best manage the aquifer that supplies drinking water to the region.
"Basically, we've talked about it long enough. Now's the time to implement it and to move forward," Beard said in a later interview. Read the entire article here.