What We Learned This Week - "Adieu" French Quarter

New Orleans French Quarter

A coalition of six environmental groups sued the Army Corps of Engineers on Thursday in a bid to block further construction of Mississippi River channel training structures.  The Corps is moving ahead with plans for more of the projects. Congress passed and sent on to the President the long-awaited Water Resources Reform and Development Act.  The bill may very well be one of the last large pieces of legislation to garner bipartisan support from Congress in this heated election year - an election year in which, thus far, incumbents still rule.  Not one House or Senate incumbent has lost yet this primary election cycle. They are 139-for-139.  One incumbent, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, handily dispatched tea-party challenger Matt Bevin in Tuesday's primary election, after McConnell's campaign spent about $47 for each of the 213,608 Republicans voting for the Senator. Farmland values fell in the first quarter in much of the Midwest, the latest sign of a downturn in the U.S. agricultural market.   That downturn may be short-lived, since China’s corn demand will increase by 41 percent over the next decade.  That increasing demand, coupled with climate change could make your cereal more expensive.  While farmers wait for demand to rise, east-central and southeast Iowa is bucking the downward land value trend, as evidenced by a recent record high price set for Henry County ($12,500 an acre). And last but not least, Louisiana's Governor and some of its legislators worked diligently over the past two weeks to quash lawsuits seeking oil and gas industry funds to restore the coastline. Meanwhile over that period, Louisiana said "adieu" to an area of the Mississippi River Delta roughly the size of New Orleans' French Quarter, which vanished into the Gulf of Mexico.