RT6: Louisiana Coastal Health Panel

Re-capping the well. The aftermath of the Macondo oil disaster and the future of the Gulf Coast. A discussion about how what's just happened over the past year will affect the land and the people for years to come. Moderated by Alex Woodward.

Alex Woodward is a staff writer with New Orleans alt-media Gambit, covering the environment, arts and culture of south Louisiana. With Gambit since 2008 he has covered everything from marching bands and cold cases to the effects of the BP disaster on the Gulf Coast.

Anne Rolfes is the founding director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. Anne began her organizing career in West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo. It was there that she first witnessed the destruction of oil production. After six years of working on Nigerian issues, Anne returned to Louisiana in 1999 to protect her home state from petrochemical pollution. Anne was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana where many people made their fortunes from the oil industry. She has seen the wealth and the poverty created by oil production and seeks to make the industry more equitable. In October 2007 Anne was recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a Community Health Leader.

David Hammer is an award-winning reporter for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. He led the paper's investigation of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon rig and broke several stories about key engineering decisions that contributed to the BP well blowout. His beats since the oil spill also include the drilling moratorium and Kenneth Feinberg's administration of spill claims. He was part of a team of journalists that won the Naonal Journalism Awards’ 2010 Edward J. Meeman Prize for environmental reporting and The Associated Press Managing Editors’ Frank Allen Award for the year’s best overall news writing in Louisiana and Mississippi. Hammer is a seventh-generation New Orleanian and a graduate of Harvard University. He worked five years for newspapers in New England and four years with The Associated Press. In 2005, he won the Dallas Press Club's Katie Award for best wire feature story of the year. After Hurricane Katrina, Hammer returned to his hometown paper to cover Louisiana's multi-billion-dollar recovery programs and won the 2007 Louisiana Press Association award for best coverage of government. As hurricane recovery money flowed to the local level, Hammer shifted to covering New Orleans City Hall. His investigation of bribery in the city's technology office earned him the 2009 Frank Allen Award.

Bob Marshall is The Times-Picayune's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has spent much of his career chronicling the people, stories and issues of Louisiana's wetlands culture. Although best known as outdoors editor of the newspaper, Marshall's 35-year career includes extensive work as a reporter and columnist covering professional, college and Olympics sports, feature writing, op-ed columns, and special projects specializing in environmental issues.

In 1997 Marshall was a member of the T-P's three-man team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the series "Oceans of Trouble" which examined the plight of the world's fisheries.

In 2005 Marshall's investigations into Corps of Engineers missteps in building the New Orleans levees and floodwalls was part of the T-P reporting package that won the Pulitzer for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina. In addition, Marshall was a finalist for the Investigative Editors and Reporters award and the Polk Award for his on-going coverage into the causes of the disaster.

In 2007 Marshall was co-author of the series entitled "Last Chance: The Fight to Save a Disappearing Coast," about Louisiana's coastal erosion problems, which won the 2007 John H. Oakes Prize for Distinguished Environmental Reporting from Columbia University.

Marshall's other national and regional awards for journalism include top honors from the Associated Press, United Press International, Scripps-Howard Foundation National Journalism Awards, Society of Professional Journalists, National Association of Sportswriters and Sportscasters and the Pro Football Writers of America, Outdoor Writers Association of America, Louisiana Outdoor Writers Association, and Southeastern Outdoors Press Association. His environmental reporting and essays have also earned recognition form a wide range of conservation and environmental groups, and including Conservationist of the Year awards from the Louisiana Wildlife Federation. And in 2004 Marshall was elected to the Circle of Chiefs by the OWAA, that group's highest award for contributions to conservation.

In addition to his newspaper work, Marshall's professional credits include his current assignment as conservation editor for Field&Stream Magazine, and terms as South region editor of Field&Stream; South columnist of Outdoor Life Magazine; host of the F&S Radio Network; co-host of ESPN's The Outdoors Writers and feature assignments for a wide range of national publications from Men's Journal and Reader's Digest to National Geographic Adventure.

Marshall lives in New Orleans with his wife, Marie.

Dr. Len Bahr is the former director of the Governor's Applied Coastal Science Program who currently publishes the La Coast Post website.

Drake Toulouse is a BP and Gulf Coast Claims Facility critic who writes at Disenfranchised Citizen.

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