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Funding for EBR justice system in dispute Parish leaders say cities are not paying their fair share
BY PATRICK SLOAN-TURNER Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By JAVIER GALLEGOS
Field technician Seth Ransbottom sweeps the accumulation of natural debris like leaves and twigs under the boom to prevent a dam from forming during an Osprey Initiative routine check of a litter trap in Monte San Bayou in north Baton Rouge on Wednesday.
‘We get dirty’ Osprey Initiative, a growing business, traps trash in Louisiana bayous — and beyond
As the combined government for the city of Baton Rouge and East Baton Rouge Parish faces another budget deficit, it is planning hundreds of layoffs and steep budget cuts. But, while city-parish leaders look inward, some are also looking outward, saying the parish’s other cities aren’t paying their fair share. The issue is particularly intense when it comes to parts of the parish’s criminal justice system that are mandated by the state constitution. The coroner, courts, district attorney and parish prison all serve the whole parish, yet Baker, Central, St. George and Zachary don’t contribute any of their tax revenue to support them. As the once-consolidated city government increasingly splinters into individual cities, some think that needs to change. “It sounds to me what we’re dealing with is the city of Baton Rouge subsidizing the parish’s constitutional offices,” said council member Cleve Dunn Jr. at a budget hearing Wednesday.
ä See FUNDING, page 8A
BY AIDAN McCAHILL
Staff writer
Future generations of archaeologists are likely to scratch their heads at Monte Sano Park in Scotlandville. In the grass, a toilet bowl lies next to a smoke detector. Nearby, weeds grow through the trunk of a Ford Roadster, parked next to an abandoned motorboat. Underneath a section of Interstate 110, litter peppers the ground. During rains, streams of plastic and Styrofoam flow a few feet down into Monte Sano Bayou, its banks lined with hundreds of car tires. “They had been dumping tires in this bayou for two decades,” said Trevor Besse, regional manager for Mobile, Alabama-based Osprey Initiative. The site, notorious for illegal dumping in Baton Rouge, is strategically located for someone in the litter business. Besse’s staff has already removed hundreds of tires, and he’s working to secure a permit to take the rest — estimated at around 2,500 — to a local recycling facility. Clearing the motorboat, though, involves messier paperwork, Besse said. Last year, BREC, the LSU Agricultural Center and ExxonMobil sought out Osprey Initiative to clean more than 600 pounds of trash from the park. The company has led similar cleanups at five other sites in
WEATHER HIGH 78 LOW 55 PAGE 8B
La. sees surge in immigrants’ lawsuits Some challenge legality of their detentions
BY MEGHAN FRIEDMANN Staff writer
Field technician Luis Vargas throws a bag of trash and a bag of recyclable materials in the back of a truck during an Osprey Initiative routine check of a litter trap in Monte San Bayou in north Baton Rouge on Wednesday. Baton Rouge. A few hundred yards downstream from the interstate, another employee, Seth Ransbottom, maneuvers a canoe toward a rubber boom that cuts across the bayou. Osprey installs and maintains devices that harness the water to collect trash in small waterways. “Stopping our litter in the small water is way easier than having to try and get it in the big water,” said
Besse. “We want to be as close to the source as possible.” The company’s low-tech devices are its hallmark and are becoming more visible in waterways across the country. Osprey collects granular data to map trash hot spots, and also tackles large-scale recycling initiatives, including leading recycling efforts during this year’s Super Bowl
ä See DIRTY, page 4A
As President Donald Trump’s administration aggressively pursues its mass deportation campaign, the number of immigrants challenging the legality of their detention at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Louisiana — a state that has become a major detention hub in recent years — has surged. In the roughly 10 months before Trump took office in January, 23 habeas petitions — a type of lawsuit that claims a person is being illegally detained — were filed in federal courts in the state. Between Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration and Nov. 1, that number soared, with at least 95 Louisiana ICE detainees challenging their detention here, a review of federal court records found.
ä See DETENTIONS, page 6A
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