The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) is utilizing its UAS for a variety of tasks.

Recently, one of the department’s UAS was used to fly over a section of the Mississippi River to document an oil spill that occurred near the French Quarter, while in another instance, a UAS allowed responders to view a flooded field in St. Landry Parish.  

When the department deploys its UAS, the UAS records the event in both still images and video, which can then be used for environmental protection and emergency response tasks.

“The UAS gives us a unique advantage in that we can deploy the aircraft to an array of locations to cover an array of environmental concerns,” says Jason Smith, manager for LDEQ’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program, via KATC.com.

“For example, UAS footage from a recent flood event in St. Landry Parish involving an oil tank gave the department that extra oversight capability that allowed us to get an aerial view as to the extent of the flooding. This played a key role in the subsequent investigation.”

The department uses its UAS in nearly every facet of its mission, including for surveillance, enforcement and waste and landfill inspections.

The UAS are routinely used for emergency response situations where an oil or chemical spill has taken place, or where flooding or fire prevents the safe passage of a boat or vehicle into the site to assess the conditions.

LDEQ has more UAS on the horizon, and their future capabilities are expected to include a thermal camera, air monitoring and air sampling functions, and optical gas imaging (for detection of leaks), just to name a few things.