The St. Tammany Environmental Council

Two things happened in the 1960's that brought thousands of new families to St. Tammany Parish. The first was the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway (the first bridge opened in 1956 and the second bridge opened in 1969, giving New Orleans workers more convenient access to the Northshore) and the second was the NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for which Slidell blossomed as a bedroom community. 

With all this growth came demand for more water and more sewerage facilities, more streets and drainage, and more high-density apartment complexes. These things could sometimes  impact the St. Tammany environment adversely, and thus was born the St. Tammany Environmental Council.

Hundreds of people from all walks of life came together to discuss, assess and try to speak out for the need of some kind of environmental regulations to oversee the vast and rapid construction of huge new subdivisions and apartment developments. These were the days when "environmental concern" was a new thing and many people didn't quite know what to make of the "tree huggers" and waterway protectionists.

Here is an article, written in 1972 by Robert Hanisee and published in Pathways Magazine. Click on the image to enlarge the viewing. 

Robert Hanisee

Today we can see some of the results of the early work of those citizen environmentalists, and also see some of the issues that still need work.