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Resilient Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Resilient Baton Rouge is a program designed to increase local community capacity in the Baton Rouge area of Louisiana to manage mental and behavioral health in flood-prone parts of the region. By engaging local leaders and healthcare providers, the program has been able to focus on not only delivering mental health services to residents displaced by floodwaters, but also to engage community members in a longer-term process to strengthen both the local communities themselves but also the plans to increase resilience in the region. By deeply engaging affected residents and stakeholders, the plans for resilience broadly are more responsive and targeted to those most affected by the floods. The program is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation with fiscal sponsorship from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Louisiana Land Trust Resettlement Projects
In Louisiana, a state-created land trust is supporting floodplain buyouts and helping families relocate out of vulnerable flood-prone areas. The Louisiana Land Trust (LLT) was created in 2005 to support buyouts after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. After more recent flood events, LLT expanded its role to help communities relocate to safer, higher ground areas. The land trust is helping to facilitate the resettlement of residents of the Pecan Acres subdivision in Pointe Coupee Parish and the Isle de Jean Charles community in Terrebonne Parish. The Pecan Acres subdivision is located in a lower-income neighborhood north of the City of New Roads, and has experienced repeated flooding 17 times over the past 20 years. LLT is working to help resettle approximately 40 households within the subdivision by acquiring their flood-prone properties, and supporting a development on higher ground where they can relocate. Isle de Jean Charles is a narrow island in South Terrebonne parish and is the home of the Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha Confederation of Muskogees and United Houma Nation tribes. The island has lost 98% of its land mass since 1955 and many residents have left as a result of increasing flooding, where encroaching seas often flood the only roadway connecting the island to the mainland. With funding from the National Disaster Resilience Competition, the state is working to support implementation of a tribal resettlement plan. LLT acquired the resettlement site, about 40 miles north of the island that will be redeveloped. Eligible and participating families and individuals will be offered properties on the site with a five-year forgivable mortgage. Both the Pecan Acres and Isle de Jean Charles resettlement developments will incorporate resilient and green design features (including elevation about FEMA minimum standards, LEED certified construction, green infrastructure, and community amenities like parks) and will enable the residents to relocate together, maintaining social bonds and cohesion. This example demonstrates how land trusts can support efforts to relocate whole communities, and support development of sustainable and resilient receiving communities.
Resource Category: Solutions
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New Orleans, Louisiana Project Home Again Land Swaps
2013
The New Orleans Project Home Again (PHA) in Louisiana involved a land swap and redevelopment program implemented post-Hurricane Katrina that can serve as an example for how public-private partnerships can help people retreat away from flood-prone coastal areas. Through this project, PHA aimed to concentrate redevelopment at higher elevations away from low-elevation floodplains and expand relocation options for impacted homeowners. The hurricane-damaged homes on participants’ original properties were demolished and converted to climate resilient open space for flood retention, environmental, and community benefits. Specifically, PHA used a land swap program that enabled low- and middle-income homeowners to relocate to less vulnerable areas with new affordable, clustered housing. The PHA program demonstrates how land swaps can offer a tool for planners and policymakers to effectively guide redevelopment in disaster recovery settings and expand affordable and resilient housing opportunities. A similar land swap model could also be considered in a pre-disaster context and phased over time, if community consensus, vacant or developable land, and funding for housing construction exists.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Managing the Retreat from Rising Seas — State of Louisiana: Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE)
July 15, 2020
Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments (LA SAFE) is a community-based planning and capital investment process that will help the state fund and implement several projects, including for managed retreat, to make its coasts more resilient. In 2016, Louisiana’s Office for Community Development–Disaster Recovery Unit received a nearly $40 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the National Disaster Resilience Competition and additional state and nongovernmental funds to implement LA SAFE. The grant will support the design and implementation of resilience projects to address impacts in six coastal parishes that were affected by Hurricane Isaac in 2012. The state partnered with the nonprofit Foundation for Louisiana to administer LA SAFE and facilitate an extensive, year-long community engagement process that will result in implementation of ten funded projects across the six parishes. By contemplating a regional, rather than a parish-specific, approach to addressing coastal risk, LA SAFE provides a model that other states and local governments may consider when making long-term adaptation and resilience investments, including for managed retreat. This case study is one of 17 case studies featured in a report written by the Georgetown Climate Center, Managing the Retreat from Rising Seas: Lessons and Tools from 17 Case Studies.
Resource Category: Solutions
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Louisiana Executive Order Number JBE 2020-19 on Coastal Resilience
August 19, 2020
In August 2020, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signed Executive Order (EO) Number JBE 2020-19 to require all state agencies to pursue Louisiana's coastal protection and adaptation goals and incorporate resilience planning into every state agency's operations. To accomplish these goals, the governor established the position of Chief Resilience Officer and resilience leads in each state agency to coordinate actions with Louisiana's Coastal Master Plan to make the coast more resilient in the face of climate change.
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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Louisiana Climate Action Plan
February 1, 2022
On February 1, 2022, Louisiana’s Climate Initiatives Task Force released the state’s first Climate Action Plan. In the plan, the task force notes that “Louisiana is among the most vulnerable states in the United States to the impacts of climate change” and poor air quality, repetitive flooding events, and extreme heat are impacting the state’s ability to be resilient. Although the Climate Action Plan is primarily intended to guide climate mitigation efforts in Louisiana, the task force recommends 28 strategies and 84 actions the state can take to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience to the impacts of climate change.
Resource Category: Planning
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Overview of Selected Parishes’ Freeboard, Fill, and Open Space Rules and Projects within Louisiana’s Region Seven Watershed
May 18, 2022
As coastal erosion and the threat of major hurricanes and other flooding events continue to threaten Louisiana, parishes have begun to adopt jurisdiction-specific approaches to mitigating those risks. The establishment of freeboard requirements, no-net fill practices, and the incorporation of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), such as open spaces and native vegetation, are three major ways to prepare for and mitigate flooding. This brief entry provides a non-exhaustive overview of some of the ways five Louisiana parishes are using these approaches: Ascension, St. Bernard, St. John the Baptist, St. Tammany, and Tangipahoa.
Resource Category: Law and Governance
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Jefferson Parish, Louisiana: Jefferson Parish Watershed Management Plan and Balancing Water Campaign
May 20, 2022
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana lies on a coastal floodplain of the Gulf of Mexico and has more water than land area. The parish is innovating to adapt to rising sea levels and more extreme flooding in the region, and created the Balancing Water Campaign to mitigate flood risk and improve its communities’ resilience. The approach to balancing water levels focuses on rethinking how to manage the impacts of stormwater and land subsidence to live with more water, while increasing natural drainage across the floodplain. The Jefferson Parish Watershed Management Plan was developed as a part of the Balancing Water initiative, to guide local decisionmakers with resilient floodplain management strategies for capital improvements, regulatory revisions, and land use, while emphasizing the use of green infrastructure and low-impact development. In addition, the parish is undertaking other complementary efforts like elevating flood-prone homes with the support of federal grants, and participating in the National Flood Insurance Program’s Community Rating System (CRS) program and a Jefferson Parish CRS Users Group to further local flood resilience initiatives.
Resource Category: Planning
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Ascension Parish, Louisiana and St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana: Conservation Planning and Zoning
May 20, 2022
Ascension and St. Tammany Parishes are two parishes or counties in Louisiana that are using planning and zoning to promote floodplain management and conserve green spaces. Each parish is contemplating how to preserve suburban and rural character through planning processes. In addition, each parish has crafted code language that allows it to conserve rural spaces by discouraging sprawl and floodplain development and by downzoning or decreasing developable density outside commercial centers. Ascension Parish Master Land Use Plan In 2019, Ascension released an updated version of its Master Land Use Plan, which was approved by the parish’s Planning Commission.
Resource Category: Planning
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Greauxing Resilience at Home — City of New Orleans, Louisiana: Gentilly Resilience District Projects
June 16, 2022
In 2015, the City of New Orleans released its Resilient New Orleans strategy outlining the city’s vision and plan for building a more equitable, adaptable, and prosperous New Orleans. The strategy outlines various recommendations, which all go towards one of three main goals: adapting to thrive, connecting to opportunity, and transforming city systems. One project featured in Resilient New Orleans is the Mirabeau Water Gardens project. Informed by the design and stormwater management features outlined in the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, the Mirabeau Water Gardens project, once completed, will serve as a recreational, environmentally friendly amenity for the community that also reduces flood risk. Specifically, a former convent will be converted into a public green space. This project is part of an overall plan to create the Gentilly Resilience District — a 12-project program designed to make a small neighborhood in New Orleans more resilient to the impacts of climate change and future disaster and flood events. Additional projects a part of the Gentilly Resilience District include the Pontilly Neighborhood Stormwater and the Blue and Green Corridors projects. Throughout the development of the plans and programs relating to the Gentilly Resilience District, local policymakers offered numerous opportunities for community input. Most of the projects not only increase community resilience, but also offer new spaces for the community to gather, educate residents on the benefits associated with green infrastructure, and incorporate safe walking and biking paths throughout the neighborhood. This case study is one of 24 case studies featured in a report written by the Georgetown Climate Center, Greauxing Resilience at Home: A Collection of Lessons and Case Studies from Louisiana and Beyond.
Resource Category: Solutions
