Xander Peters

I'm a writer and reporter telling the Gulf Coast and South's stories through characters that add to the human experience's complexity – in demonstrations of fortitude, collaboration, and, sometimes, grief. I'm based in New Orleans and my native East Texas. 

The Christian Science Monitor •

Citrus crisis: As an iconic Florida crop fades, another tree rises

The citrus industry, long a defining symbol of Florida, is facing an existential crisis due to a plant disease that arrived in the state in 2005 and has spread to affect 80% of the orange groves. In 2004, Florida had an estimated 7,000 growers. Today, there are about 2,000. If the latest estimates hold, the state’s current growing season will yield 61% less fruit than last season, partly due to hurricane effects.

The Estes family’s most productive trees have been cut down and burned.

Back at his office, Mr. Estes leans back in a chair and crosses his hands over his chest. Years after the arrival of what’s called citrus greening disease, “we really don’t have a good answer,” he says.

What he does have is a willingness to adapt. He and other farmers aim to chart a path of ingenuity that can keep agriculture – and its livelihood for workers – in the state. To do that, a first step is to prove that new crops like pongamia fulfill their promise.
National Geographic •

In these cemeteries, nature also rests in peace

At its most peaceful, the Indiangrass Preserve in southeast Texas is hushed and still. Its springtime canvas is lush with prairie grass; monarch butterflies cling to yellow tickseed flowers as eastern bluebirds circle overhead. Come summer, rains will douse its shallow wetlands, where bobcats pause to drink as they prowl for cottontails.

An agrochemical research facility occupied part of the site as recently as 2001. Then the Katy Prairie Conservancy restored the land into a nature preserve.

S
Scalawag •

What happened to New Orleans’ Black truck farming culture? – Scalawag

George Lafargue is proud of his tomatoes. They're not like the tomatoes you'd buy in the supermarket, their centers lifeless in taste, color an off-white. His are as red on the inside as on the outside, full of flavor, like fireworks on your taste buds. As tomatoes should be, he says.

He grows some of his stock for George's Produce, his storefront in New Orleans' Westbank, on a 23-acre plot of land he owns outside the city. The rest of it comes from other small farmers across south Louisiana an
The Bitter Southerner •

It Runs Downhill: The Fight to Save Florida’s Indian River Lagoon —

In 2018, University of Central Florida undergraduate student Heidi Waite published a study in the journal “Marine Pollution Bulletin” that found that oysters in the Mosquito Lagoon, the lagoon’s northernmost end, had the highest level of microplastics ever measured — at any time, anywhere on Earth. Microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that measure less than 5 millimeters in length, the leftovers of larger pieces of plastic gradually breaking down. Researchers have found that these tiny piece
The Christian Science Monitor •

It was one of South’s earliest free Black towns. Now it fights a highway.

“We need to stay steadfast,” Beverly Steele, one of the organizers, tells a crowd at a meeting in June.

In the violent, post-Reconstruction era, remaining silent helped keep the community safe, but that won’t work any longer. So its small band of community organizers is speaking up.

Officially, what’s known today as Royal was founded in 1865, but the community’s oral history can be traced back for decades prior to the Civil War, residents say. And part of what they want the world to know is th
The Christian Science Monitor •

‘We’re trying to protect our kids’: Ohio town seeks answers after spill

State officials have advised residents in the region to drink bottled water. The EPA says it has screened the homes of roughly 500 residents so far and not found contaminants. The agency also pledges to hold railroad company Norfolk Southern responsible for cleanup costs.

A parade of emergency responders and politicians – and yesterday the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency – has come to the town trying to help. And today the Biden administration said a team of medical profess
The Christian Science Monitor •

Test in Ohio: How to repair derailed trust

“It’s just devastating for our little town,” Ms. Unkefer says as she wraps a customer’s flowers. “We’ve been through so much. We’re just trying to survive, and we will. But you just worry.”

Working at a flower shop in town, Kathleen Unkefer continue​s​ drinking bottled water. She mentions friends who now have trouble selling their local honey and chickens.

“You’re not going to turn things around in a 24-hour news cycle,” says Stan Meiburg, ​a former Environmental Protection Agency official now
The Christian Science Monitor •

Not rolling on the river: Drought tests America’s main water highway

“I never say we control the river,” Professor Willson says. “We’re trying to manage the river. When you manage something, you’re using your experiences, your knowledge.”

That can mean continued investment in infrastructure and research, and managing water in a way that’s functional for both the river and its surrounding communities.

Water levels in the Mississippi River fell far below normal this autumn. Recent rains are starting to allow freight to flow more freely. But questions remain about
The Christian Science Monitor •

Shaken but resilient, Florida residents move forward together after Ian

“It’s really inspiring to see everybody come together the way that they always talk about on the news,” says Ms. Liepitz’s daughter Damie Liepitz, referring to the recent generosity of their neighbors in sharing food, shelter, and a gas-powered generator.

Questions have begun surfacing about whether state and local officials acted swiftly enough in ordering evacuations for residents in parts of southwest Florida ­– official evacuation orders were handed down just 24 hours prior to Ian’s landfal
The Christian Science Monitor •

Rise of the climate optimists, pushing back against gloom

To take a fatalistic approach is “to risk people throwing up their hands in the air and not doing anything,” says Christopher Barile, a researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno.

The focus on hope – visible in books, podcasts, and nonprofit efforts – is partly a response to pessimism, to a rising sense of feeling either overwhelmed or that there’s nothing humanity can do. One sign of the times: In a 10-nation survey last year , 59% of young people age 16 to 25 said they are extremely or very
The Christian Science Monitor •

Five years after Hurricane Harvey, a legacy of perseverance

“There’s a capacity inequity,” says Samuel Brody, a flood mitigation expert at Texas A&M University. “Without the capacity to understand, to plan, and to mitigate” for future flood risks, “small communities are going to continue to be left behind.”

Many people in rural regions like this one have relatively low incomes, don’t have flood insurance, and live where local governments have limited resources to bolster their support.

Their struggles hold lessons for the nation amid warnings by scient
The Christian Science Monitor •

Wildfires, hurricanes, and lessons on cooperation from Florida Panhandle

The Florida Forest Service launched a public service campaign earlier this year to help residents better prepare their yards and homes, as well as suggested supplies for emergencies. And timber-recovery block grants, like the one allocated in 2019 that is helping pay for debris removal, could help as well.

Florida is awake to the risk and trying to respond.

Eventually rains helped put out the fires. But climate change could increase the number of double-headed crises like this one, where the w
The Christian Science Monitor •

In New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, our garden grows a sense of place

Our kitchen is filled with bags of produce to share. But the garden is not just about food. Without our garden, I never would have understood my new community, my new family in New Orleans.

Working outside, I was available to neighbors. Roy stopped to tell me about the couple who’d owned our home. I met “The Praline Lady,” who hawks homemade candy from her motorized wheelchair. Athelgra sang with The Dixie Cups, whose big hit was “Chapel of Love” in 1964. Will told me that, after Katrina, he’d
The Christian Science Monitor •

In this Mississippi city, public art points a way forward

The story has larger lessons, says Ellen Winner, a professor specializing in art psychology at Boston College. The process of viewing public art, she says, “raises our morale, connects us to the arts, connects us to each other, it makes us think, and it raises our mood.”

“If you make your residents happy, tourists will come and appreciate those things, but you’re not ostracizing your residents at that cost,” Mr. Harris says. “It’s really about community development and not economic development.
The Christian Science Monitor •

If you bake it, can you sell it? A ‘right to food’ movement grows.

At a minimum, flexibility in food laws could make a difference in the lives of people like Kara Donovan in Rhode Island, whose desire to sell baked goods from her home is stymied by state law. “We’re all just trying to do this thing,” she says of her family.

“People who are poor don’t have the time, they don’t have the land, they don’t have the private property in which they can grow their own stuff,” says Mariana Chilton, director of Drexel University’s Center for Hunger-Free Communities. “I t
The Christian Science Monitor •

With South’s ecosystems at risk, a rally around the longleaf pine

Recovery of the forests can coincide with sustainable harvesting of trees, says Dale Brockway, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “It’s really about having a dynamic system that is completely functional.”

The attempt to save Camp Whispering Pines is part of a larger mosaic of efforts across the South to preserve trees known for their resilience against wind, fire, and drought. The pines also provide habitat for at-risk species like the red-cockaded woodpecker, eastern indigo sn
The Christian Science Monitor •

Rebuild or relocate? Storms leave Louisiana city facing tough choices.

“We see a lot of similarities” between modern climate migrants and those who fled the Plains states during the Dust Bowl, says Carlos Martín, an expert on communities at the Urban Institute. But today’s migrants are “often on a household level, rather than a whole community-level decision-making process.”

Their challenges, and their stay-or-go choices, hold larger lessons in a time of more severe storms due to climate change.

Monty and Nashonna Aucoin also lost the home they were living in. Wh
The Christian Science Monitor •

‘The heart of the city is still there.’ How this Mardi Gras stoked revival.

But this Carnival season “was a reminder that we still are what makes the city amazing,” she says. “Over the past couple of weeks, I saw a light come on – in my friends, in my neighborhood. ... Everyone has hope again.”

For Nikki Ummel, a local poet and educator, there was a moment after Hurricane Ida hit the city last year when she wondered how much longer she could be in New Orleans.

This year marked New Orleans’ first Carnival season since 2020. Within weeks after Fat Tuesday in February of
The Christian Science Monitor •

An oysterman’s new worry: Will state’s coastal plan wash out his business?

“If you don’t do the project, my guess is you won’t have any recognizable fisheries within 25 years,” says Mark Davis, founding director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. He acknowledges the near-term challenges for people like Mr. Shelley, but he adds, “If you’re not reintroducing river water, you’re continuing to introduce Gulf water. Productively grown oysters, they exist in a band of brackish water – and we’re losing it.”

Local governments in this fishing-oriented a
The Christian Science Monitor •

Biden aid for Black farmers: The view from one Louisiana farm

The funding is so far the closest the federal government has come to keeping its reparations promise of “40 acres and a mule” since Union Army Gen. William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 in January 1865, enshrining the hope of land for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War. Some farmers call the relief too little, too late.

President Joe Biden’s far-reaching $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, while aimed at addressing the nationwide challenges of the coronavirus pandemic,
Audubon •

Fighting Black Land Loss Helps Birds, Too

The Joe family was gathered at Arthur and Queen Ester Joe’s home in Newbern, Alabama, on a summer evening in the early 1970s when the children asked about the white figures standing outside. Queen Ester told them not to worry as she rushed them to the back of the house. Draped in white robes, like a nightmare ripped from a Southern dreamscape, Ku Klux Klan members stood idly by the mailbox, says the couple’s grandson Christopher Joe, who heard the story from a cousin who was there that day.

It
Esquire •

The Fantasy Football Kingpin

The names of people in this story have been changed for privacy.

I didn't expect the first text from Sam. It came on a wholly unremarkable night. Unprompted. Sam had a problem. He needed advice, and didn't really have anyone else to turn to. It wasn't exactly something Sam could broach with friends, parents, colleagues, or peers. So he went to me, a guy he lacked personal history with. That seemed to be the point.

Sam is an undergrad at a college in Minnesota, couldn't tell you where. He’s som
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