Friday, September 15, 2006
Gulf Coast Update features Morris’s images
 The Wall Street Journal Online’s Gulf Coast Update, an interactive feature about the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, includes photographs taken by Dr. M.T. Hallock Morris, assistant professor of political science. The organization contacted Morris after finding her photos of the area on an image-sharing Web site. Taken this summer, the pictures depict boarded-up houses in New Orleans and frames of new houses popping up near Baton Rouge. Morris took the photographs in the Gulf area while doing research on the politics of coastal wetland loss in Louisiana. A Faculty Research and Creative Work Award (FRCWA), a Summer Research Fellowship funded by the Lilly Endowment, and a College of Liberal Arts Faculty Development Award (CLAFDA), allowed her to do the research in the Gulf this summer, and a Liberal Arts Research Award will allow her to continue her work during the fall semester. “I am very happy that the University is supportive of junior faculty and our research goals,” she said. Morris has identified the concept of a “focusing event” that draws national attention to a problem and can help spur the national government to help pay to correct the problem. “So with Hurricane Katrina, the complete wiping out of New Orleans would be the focusing event,” she said. Her research focuses on providing the money to rebuild the wetlands in Louisiana. “Right now they receive money through the Breaux Act - 40 million a year - but they really need more like 14 billion to help with the loss of coastal land. “They lose so many acres of wetlands every year. They are losing a lot of land. A lot of it has to do with practices in the past to get oil out of the wetlands; part of it has to do with subsidence due to flood control practices; and also sea level rise due to global warming.” Restoring wetlands is about a lot more than birds and plants, Morris said. “The pipelines come in through all those wetlands and as the wetlands become less healthy, the pipelines are exposed to more salt water, which can lead to corrosion. It’s also a national security issue. In the future, what if a hurricane breaks one of these pipelines? We know our oil comes from Alaska and the Middle East, but how many people knew how much gas was coming from the Gulf until gas prices sky-rocketed last summer? It’s not just gas for our cars, but natural gas to heat our homes that comes through Louisiana. “It’s also about the fisheries. If you like seafood, that’s a huge nursery down there. As the wetlands continue to erode there will be a ‘tipping point’ where they won’t be able to sustain a fishery.” Morris has lived in Florida and Louisiana, and she worked for the Southern Mutual Help Association (SMHA) a not-for-profit organization with a mission to eradicate poverty in rural Louisiana, before completing work on her Ph.D. “I’d seen hurricane damage because I grew up in the south, but never this much. It’s pretty much the whole coast of Louisiana. If it wasn’t Katrina, it was Rita. What you see on TV doesn’t begin to describe it.” |
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