Louisiana Unveils Ambitious Plan to Help People Get Out of the Way of Climate Change

By Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul

May 15, 2019, 5:00 AM EDT

Gerard Braud has no plans to leave his handsome Creole-style house with its 15-foot-high front porch on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a short drive from New Orleans. “Peacefulness and tranquility” is how he explains the appeal of living here.

Except that thanks in part to climate change, the lake keeps hopping the short seawall in front of Braud’s house and taking over his neatly manicured lawn—not just during hurricanes, but also when the tide is high and the winds are strong. His flood insurance premiums have almost doubled to $5,000 a year, making him wonder how difficult it would be to sell even if he wanted to.

In flood-prone areas across southern Louisiana, residents such as Braud risk running out of choices: living in homes that are hard to leave but put them in harm’s way. In response, the state on Wednesday issued a sweeping blueprint—the first of its kind in the U.S.—for managing the ongoing population movement away from its coastal areas, and preparing inland communities to receive an infusion of people.

Officials around the country are being forced to confront whether, and how, to help people get out of the way of the effects of climate change. None has gone so far as what Louisiana is proposing.

The 1,500-page strategy divides Louisiana’s flood-prone southeast into ● low, ● moderate and ● high risk zones.

It then outlines steps to help people move from the riskiest areas—including voluntary buyouts—into “receiving communities” further inland.

It also proposes changes to prepare those communities for the influx already underway, as well as toughening coastal towns for residents who choose to remain, along with other measures.

“This is not a mandate for anyone, but it is based on the feedback given by those who will be most directly impacted,” Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We have to be realistic about the current and future effects of coastal land loss and plan today to develop Louisiana’s next generation of communities.”

Louisiana is losing almost a football field’s worth of land every hour, driven by a combination of rising seas and the nature of its soil, which is subsiding at a fast rate. In the face of repeated hurricanes and flooding, some of the state’s coastal towns saw more than half of their residents leave between the 2000 and 2010 U.S. Census.

In an attempt to handle the flow of people, the report looks at six parishes around the end of the Mississippi, and projects the future flood risk in each part of those parishes. It includes a long list of policies, including a temporary buyout program for high-risk areas to provide both “an incentive and the assistance many people need to move away.”

“It doesn’t mean moving 200 miles from the coast,” said Pat Forbes, executive director of Louisiana’s Office of Community Development, which produced the report. “It means moving to a safer place. Part of this is getting people out of the most dangerous areas.”

A sign advertising lots for sale, sitting alone above marsh water and reeds

A sign in southern Terrebonne Parish, in an area designated by the state as high risk.
Photographer: Emily Kask / Bloomberg

The document calls for high-risk areas to “transition away from permanent residential development.” For those residents and structures that remain, the report urges local officials to impose stronger building codes and stormwater management systems. And it proposes “floating services such as medical facilities, schools, and groceries to serve people in coastal areas.”

“This isn’t just about managed retreat,” Forbes said. “Some places are going to have to retreat. And some are adapting through other measures, because we recognize we’re going to have people in the coast.”

The strategy goes beyond homes. Southern Louisiana is heavily industrial, so the report proposes what it calls “bonding requirements for new commercial developments in high-risk areas to ensure demolition at the end of their useful life or upon long-term vacancy.”

The state’s blueprint, which reflects feedback from more than 70 public meetings and events and is part of a state program funded by a $40 million grant from the Obama administration, also includes a raft of changes in what it designates as lower-risk, higher-elevation regions. Those proposals include denser development, better transportation infrastructure, and more appealing downtown areas.

“We really want to get on the front end of the opportunity that I think comes from migration,” said Mathew Sanders, the resilience program and policy administrator for the office and the person who led the development of the strategy.

In St. Tammany Parish, where Braud lives, almost 10 percent of urban land is in high-risk zones. That counts as lucky here: In Plaquemines Parish, the ever-narrowing strip of land that escorts the Mississippi River into the gulf, 55 percent of urban land is in high-risk areas—along with 41 percent of the population.

And those figures assume that Louisiana’s ambitious, $50 billion plan for preserving and restoring some of its coast, through such measures as diverting parts of the Mississippi, actually happens. If not, the risks will be even greater.

“Even a conservative projection does not present a rosy outlook for many of our most vulnerable communities,” Sanders said. “And that was really the point we were trying to illustrate.”

Sanders said that it would now be up to local officials to decide how much of the blueprint to implement. In his statement, Governor Edwards said his administration “will continue to do whatever we can to empower our citizens and local leaders.”

Gerard Braud poses for a portrait outside his home.

Gerard Braud outside his home in Mandeville. The main floor is 15 feet off the ground.
Photographer: Emily Kask / Bloomberg

Bloomberg News visited some of the communities identified as high risk before the report’s release. Those places ranged from remote fishing villages to recently developed suburbs a short drive from New Orleans. What each had in common was residents’ deep ambivalence about the idea of leaving.

Near Bayou Dularge, at the end of a long row of elevated homes in southern Terrebonne Parish, Danielle Verrett said it’s been years since the last big hurricane—which tells her it’s only a matter of time until the next one hits.

“Our number’s got to be pulled,” Verrett said. Still, asked whether she’d want to live somewhere safer, Verrett said she liked the wide-open space, as well as hunting deer nearby. “It’s kind of hard to move,” she said.

In the town of Lafitte, whose latest population estimate was 886 people, Melba and Westley Frickey live in a converted double-wide trailer with an immaculate garden, between a bayou and a lake. Melba rattled off the hurricanes—Rita, in 2005; Gustav, in 2008; Isaac, in 2012—that flooded their home. But the couple said they don’t want to move.

“I moved down here to go fishing,” Westley said. He said nobody from the government had ever talked to him about a buyout, and he wasn’t sure he’d take one if offered. Asked if he was worried about his safety during the next storm, he said only, “You never know.”

Westley and Melba Frickey standing on the stairs outside their home

Westley and Melba Frickey outside their home in Lafitte, 20 miles south of New Orleans.
Photographer: Emily Kask / Bloomberg

Northeast of New Orleans, a neighborhood called Eden Isles offers homeowners easy access to the water, through a series of canals that look more like South Florida than the marshes of Louisiana. A sign at the entrance boasts “Waterfront Living At Its Best.”

Dave Robertson, who’s retired from the Navy, said his home here had only flooded once, when Hurricane Katrina put three and a half feet of water in his house and a refrigerator in his swimming pool. But his flood insurance has tripled since he moved here in 2004.

“I have not noticed any rise in waters through the years,” Robertson said. Still, “every hurricane season is anxiety.”

Braud, whose lakefront home is in the well-to-do city of Mandeville, said he wouldn’t take a buyout even if the state offered him one. “I don’t want my government pissing away money to buy my house,” he said. He argued that it makes more sense to raise the building even higher off the ground—something Braud doesn’t have the money to do himself.

And if the government really wants to reduce flood risk, he added, “stop building new structures in swamps or floodplains.”

In the meantime, until the water gets so high that it’s in his living room, Braud said he wants to stay. “The view is amazing,” he said. “I can enjoy the thrill of Mother Nature.”

Louisiana Unveils Ambitious Plan to Help People Get Out of the Way of Climate Change

A narrowing footprint: Building patterns in southern Louisiana

Louisiana has divided its coast into three categories of flood risk

Share of population living in each risk zone by parish

Population change by parish, 2000-2018

As waters rise, insurance is getting more expensive