20.1 LBD - Fort St. Philip

(1761 - 1765, 1792 - 1923) Directly across the Mississippi River from Fort Jackson, at Bayou Mardi Gras. A small French work known as Fort St. Philippe (1761 - 1765) was first located here. It was abandoned. The Spanish then built Fort San Felipe de Placaminas (1792 - 1803) (18 guns). Suffered hurricane damage in 1793 and 1794. Became American in 1803. Also known as Fort Plaquemines and Fort at Plaquemines Bend. Suffered hurricane damage in 1814. It was strengthened in December 1814 after a British naval attack, and rebuilt in 1841. Suffered hurricane damage in 1854. Two Water Batteries were located to either flank of the fort just before the Civil War. Controlled by Confederates in 1861 - 1862, the 45-gun fort was captured by the Union in April 1862 along with Fort Jackson. Abandoned in 1871, but regarrisoned after smuggled liquor was found here. In 1872 the water batteries were reworked and joined together with a new section along the front of the fort to form a continuous 25-gun battery. At least ten guns were mounted by the 1890's. An unnamed battery of two M1888 8-inch BL guns on modified 15-inch Rodman carriages was located here in 1898 - 1899. The water battery was largely built over and/or destroyed by the later batteries, although several platforms and magazines are still extant. Endicott batteries here are Battery Pike (1898 - 1919), Battery Forse (1899 - 1918), Battery Merrill (1907 - 1920), Battery Ridgely (1899 - 1913), Battery Scott (1901 - 1920), and Battery Brooke (1904 - 1920). (Paul Orr)

Rivergator Appendix 10
Big Industry
Baton Rouge to Gulf of Mexico

by Paul Orr

Toxic Release Inventory (TRI)

Under the descriptions of the chemical manufacturing facilities and oil refineries you will see the toxic releases from those facilities. This comes from the Toxic Release Inventory or TRI. Since the passage of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (and later expanded under the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990) any facility that produce more than 25,000 pounds or handles more than 10,000 pounds of specific toxic chemicals must report to the EPA how much of those chemicals it releases into the environment, disposes of onsite, or sends offsite for disposal. The data is all self-reported, that is each facility must keeps track of their own releases (this usually comes from discharge permits given by state environmental agencies) and provide that information to the EPA. These are all legal releases of toxic material. The facilities are legally allowed to discharge certain amounts of toxic material into the environment. This does not include accidental or un-permitted releases. It generally takes two years for the EPA to process all of the TRI submissions and release the data so you will see that all of the TRI data in Rivergator is from the most recently available year at the time of its writing which is 2013. We have only included releases of toxic material into the air and water in Rivergator. Virtually all of the TRI water discharges listed in Rivergator are into the Mississippi River. Information about the specific toxic chemicals released, onsite and offsite disposal, and host of other information is available online.

You can access the TRI data directly from the EPA at: http://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program

TRI data can also be accessed via an organization called the Right To Know Network. Their website can access EPA's TRI database in a way that is sometimes easier to use than the EPA site: http://www.rtknet.org/db/tri