This story was originally published by Propublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. In July of 2021, a professional architectural historian named Erin Edwards delivered what she expected would be the near-final draft of a report about a contested swath of sugar cane plantation land along the Mississippi River in Louisiana. The painstaking survey, for her bosses at a consulting firm, was supposed to identify harms to historic sites so that developers can prevent or minimize them.…