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BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA
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F r i d ay, N ov e m b e r 7, 2025
BR airport braces for air traffic cuts
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PHOTO PROVIDED By LOUISIANA STATE POLICE
An Aug. 22 explosion at Smitty’s Supply in Tangipahoa Parish forced the evacuation of hundreds of nearby residents.
Feds, La. sue plant over explosion
years of alleged environmental violations also cited BY ALEX LUBBEN Staff writer
STAFF PHOTO By MICHAEL JOHNSON
Passengers from an arriving flight walk through the terminal at the Baton Rouge Metro Airport on Thursday.
Government shutdown causing flight uncertainties ä Airlines began canceling flights due to FAA order to reduce traffic.
BY IANNE SALVOSA Staff writer
Ana Lord arrived in Baton Rouge around 12:30 p.m. Thursday. She’s in town for a wedding, and is set to leave Louisiana on Sunday, flying through Dallas-Fort Worth and LaGuardia airports. When she flew in from Charlotte, North Carolina, she didn’t face any of the major delays that travelers
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around the country have experienced due to the government shutdown causing shortages of air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration employees. But on Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a 10%
reduction in air traffic to relieve workloads for federal employees, and unveiled a list Thursday morning of 40 major airports impacted — and Lord’s stops on Sunday are on that list. Despite the cuts, she wasn’t stressed as she waited to hear from the airports on whether her flights would be impacted. Ten travelers,
ä See AIRPORT, page 9A
Federal and state regulators are suing Smitty’s Supply Inc., the Tangipahoa Parish oil and lubricant plant, over an Aug. 22 explosion that sent a plume of black smoke towering over Roseland and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents, as well as numerous previous alleged environmental violations. The 65-page lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in New Orleans, calls the explosion “catastrophic” and accuses Smitty’s of “repeatedly failing” to follow pollution-control laws and maintaining “insufficient” spill-prevention plans long before the August explosion. Cleanup from the explosion is ongoing, the lawsuit states, and months later there is still a risk of additional pollution from the site of the explosion. “Plaintiffs ask this Court to hold Defendant accountable for unlawfully polluting the Nation’s and the State’s waters, and to require Defendant to take all appropriate measures to prevent future spills or discharges,” the lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, states.
ä See EXPLOSION, page 9A
Edwards permanently appoints Slaughter as top administrator She had been serving as acting CAO for mayor BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER Staff writer
East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Sid Edwards has chosen his acting top administrator to lead his office going forward. Christel Slaughter, who has served as acting chief administrative officer for Edwards since early Sep-
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tember, has been appointed to the position on a permanent basis. “Christel Slaughter is a proven leader who understands the complexities of government, values collaboration and has an unwavering commitment to the people of East Baton Rouge Parish,” Edwards said in a statement Thursday. Slaughter was contracted in as acting CAO after Charlie Davis stepped down from the top spot and took the new title as Edwards’ chief efficiency officer.
After Davis moved to his new role, Edwards initially announced he would be conducting a national search to fill the vacancy in his office’s top job. “ ... But each day that Christel served in the interim position, it became clearer to me that she was the right person for the job. We found our national pick right here in Baton Rouge,” he said. SSA Consultants, Slaughter’s consulting firm, ran the search for LSU’s president, which ended earlier this
week when Wade Rousse was selected by the Board of Supervisors. Slaughter began as a partner at SSA in 1983 and became CEO in 2018. Her current contract as interim CAO expires in December, after which she will sign a new agreement and will serve as permanent CAO — but as a contracted employee, the Mayor-President’s Office said. Edwards’ office said in a statement that Slaughter
STAFF PHOTO By JAVIER GALLEGOS
Christel Slaughter will become the permanent chief administrative officer for East Baton Rouge Parish Mayorä See SLAUGHTER, page 9A President Sid Edwards.
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