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1 week ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, the Calcasieu river’s ongoing pollution, on top of decades of hazardous waste dumping, earned it a top 10 slot on American Rivers’ 2025 list of most endangered rivers. The Orleans Parish School Board heard a settlement offer from the City of New Orleans in a years-old tax lawsuit. The school board contends the city has illegally skimmed millions of tax dollars from schools.
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4 weeks ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, a court order last year mandated some protections for incarcerated men at Angola who work the Farm Line for little or no compensation in the brutal summer heat. In response, state officials made few meaningful improvements to conditions. This summer, newly instituted policies could make things even worse.
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1 month ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, the Louisiana Department of Education and Orleans Parish School Board have asked a federal judge to release them from a decade-old decision forcing them to operate under a consent decree which was instituted on behalf of special-education students who weren’t receiving proper services in the early days of New Orleans’ charter school system.
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1 month ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week, two St. James Parish residents who recently wrote a piece for the Lens on their families’ deep roots in the region and how local histories like their own are threatened by the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries.
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1 month ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, New Orleanians maintain certain traditions at Carnival parades. We say hello to strangers, tote wagons and folding chairs and blankets. But along the St. Charles parade route, we most often settle in areas with our people. Anthony Hingle Jr. didn’t touch beads or feathers for 32 years. Now he’s back in town, continuing the work of his father, Flagboy Meathead, a legend among Black Masking Indians.
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1 month ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, to fuel the AI explosion and its outsize energy requirements, Louisiana utility company, Entergy has floated a proposal to build a massive AI data center in an impoverished section of north Louisiana. The $10 billion project is being touted as the largest single investment in Louisiana history and promises hundreds of new high-paying jobs but would require a surge in energy demand that would lean heavily on fossil fuels.
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2 months ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, weather wreaked havoc on some Mardi Gras parades, forcing a re-routing of two of the most highly anticipated parades, Zulu and Rex on Fat Tuesday. The truncated route meant substantial losses for some businesses on the most important revenue-generation day of the year, and in a long-held parading practice, some marching bands lost out on their compensation as well.
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2 months ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, during Carnival season, gun arrests of people — mostly Black men — spike. For the last two years, NOPD has arrested more people for gun-related offenses during Mardi Gras week than any other time of the year. This year, things could be different, due to a new Louisiana state law which allows permitless carrying of concealed weapons. It’s still unclear however, whether concealed weapons are allowed at parades. Delaney Dryfoos on krewes’ efforts to make parades greener.
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2 months ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, about a month before the Super Bowl, to the surprise of many local officials, Gov. Jeff Landry announced the imminent construction of the “Transitional Center,” a 200-bed congregate homeless shelter in an uninsulated warehouse. Records show however that while the City was kept in the dark about the plans, some prominent local real estate developers had been in on the discussions for months.
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2 months ago | 
thelensnola.org | Carolyne Heldman
This week on Behind The Lens, as the Super Bowl approached, Governor Jeff Landry tasked a committee, dubbed “The Super Gras Subcommittee” with beautifying and prepping the city for the massive attention it would be receiving. The subcommittee focused on the major tourist areas, but also did a drive through of the Lower 9th Ward, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
