CURRENT
PROJECTS
Takings Law and Sea Level Rise
In February 2010, the Louisiana Sea Grant Law & Policy Program and project partners Florida Sea Grant, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Legal Program, Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, and Texas Wesleyan School of Law launched a new legal research and outreach program on the impact of the “regulatory takings” doctrine on the ability of local governments to implement sea level rise adaptation policies. This work is funded by Gulf of Mexico Sea Grant Programs, the EPA Gulf of Mexico Office, the Northern Gulf Institute, and the U.S. Geological Survey. Although the products and services are designed to meet the needs of local planners and land use decision-makings, the team believes this information will be useful to anyone living and working along the Gulf Coast.
For more information on the project, please visit http://masglp.olemiss.edu/GOM/GOMProject.html or contact James Wilkins.
Adapting to Sea Level Rise through the Integration of Land Use Planning and Hazard Mitigation in Coastal Communities: Mandeville, Louisiana
In April 2010, extension, outreach, and education (EOE) professionals in the Gulf region met in St. Petersburg, Florida, to create a long-term community of practice. At this workshop, EOE professionals were provided with the latest information from technical experts on the projected rate of sea level rise, anticipated impacts to coastal natural and built resources, adaptation strategies, and practical tools for communicating risk and using community based social marketing. After this, the Sea Grant Legal Program, in conjunction with members of the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program and the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute, decided to use what they learned in a pilot project in Mandeville, Louisiana. The project consists of a series of workshops with city and parish decision makers on a variety of issues related to sea level rise, including storm surge modeling, subsidence, risk perception, and legal concerns.
For more information on the Community of Practice in the Gulf of Mexico, please visit http://masgc.org/climate/cop/index.html . For more information on the project, contact Melissa Daigle.
Oyster
Product Liability
An article
is being written, examining the potential exposure of oyster
producers to tort liability if no post-harvest treatments are
used on oysters marketed for raw consumption. Ingestion of the
naturally occurring pathogen Vibrio vulnificus can
result in death for people with compromised immune systems.
Post-harvest treatment measures have been developed recently,
which could decrease the chances of ingestion of this pathogen.
This paper reports on the potential responsibility of oyster
producers to use these new treatments.
Contact:
James Wilkins
