Bridge to Tigerland closing, new rules for oil tank batteries

The Advocate's Top Headlines

with Jennifer Wadsworth | Assistant metro editor

Good morning. We hope your weekend's going well. Let's bring you up to speed on some of our latest stories.

New rules

After an oil field tank battery explosion killed a 14-year-old girl, state regulators have put new rules in place and started mapping out where they're all located.

"In decades past, even people who weren’t in the oil and gas business almost always had relatives or friends who were, so there was a baseline understanding of what oilfield equipment was and what risks to avoid," Commissioner of Conservation Richard Ieyoub explains in this story. "That isn’t as much the case in this era, so we need to do more to make sure inherent hazards of working sites are understood."

Bridge closing

The Bob Pettit Boulevard Bridge — a major link between Tigerland and LSU — will close Monday as the city-parish spends the next several months replacing it. But, as Paul Cobler reports, discussions about building a temporary pedestrian bridge in its place have gone nowhere.

Trailblazer

Baton Rouge attorney Marci Blaize finally has her dream job after working 23 years in private practice as a criminal defense lawyer in state and federal courts. In this piece, Joe Gyan Jr. profiles Blaize, who was recently named the supervisory Assistant Federal Public Defender in charge of the Federal Public Defender Office that serves the Baton Rouge-based Middle District of Louisiana.

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