USA: Louisiana unveils ambitious plan to help people get out of the way of climate change
By Christopher Flavelle and Mira Rojanasakul
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In flood-prone areas across southern Louisiana, residents [...] 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.
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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.”
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.”
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