Left to Louisiana's Tides, a Village Fights for Time
March 2, 2018 4:13 AM   Subscribe

It might seem counterintuitive to keep building on land that is submerging. But Mr. Kerner did not see it as his job to take a 10,000-foot view. In the years since Hurricane Katrina, he had grown weary of being rebuffed in his quixotic campaign to encircle Lafitte with a tall and impregnable levee. He could rhapsodize all he wanted about preserving his community’s authentic way of life. The cost-benefit calculus — more than $1 billion to protect fewer than 7,000 people — always weighed against him. So he had set out to change it. His strategy was to secure so much public investment for Jean Lafitte that it would eventually become too valuable to abandon. Story by Kevin Sack and John Schwartz for The New York Times.
posted by bryon (21 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
I did not read the whole article. It seems like the decent thing to do here is for the state or federal government to buyout the town over time. Which will give the people the money to move somewhere else.

A buyout will probably be a lot cheaper than $1 billion dollars.
posted by KaizenSoze at 5:26 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


They are trying that with another town. The problem is nobody wants to leave.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 5:28 AM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


Mr. Kerner did not see it as his job to take a 10,000-foot view...His strategy was to secure so much public investment for Jean Lafitte that it would eventually become too valuable to abandon.

See this couple of paragraphs is self-contradictory. He is making long term calculations to affect policy, but it's a completely egocentric and unsustainable one.

I understand people get emotional about 'home', but life is hard, get a helmet. These times are different than the recent pax americana people are used to where they can do whatever they want and probably get bailed out. But they are similar to the long tail of human history where groups of people have to sometimes make abrupt changes to their way of life to survive.

Pissing into the wind at this point is just a waste of hydration.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 5:34 AM on March 2, 2018 [13 favorites]


How would the free market solve this dilemma? I'd like to ask the current administration.

Also, Americans were, tradition has it, those who moved on in search of better life, and Europeans are supposed to be the ones who stubbornly stayed behind. What gives here? Are these people losing the American spirit?

The Dutch polder way could be applied here, wringing productive land out of the sea, except for the hurricanes. Also, these people are probably not much into farming, and as fishermen they could easily live on water, like the guy with the plastic bottle island. Lots of plastic soda bottles could be used for this project, I see it as a win-win.
posted by Laotic at 5:41 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


decent thing to do here is for the state or federal government to buyout the town over time...

How would the free market solve this dilemma?


From a 'market' perspective, there is no dilemma. Tidal flats have been known as a precarious spot throughout human history. And western scientists have been ringing the bell on the likely changes in sea level for two generations.

I don't see why this outcropping of stubborn hand-wringing should be subsidized more than any other. This isn't Venice here.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 6:06 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


It's funny but I never see these articles about communities that aren't overwhelmingly white. (Jean Lafitte is 93% white according to quick googling.)

These folks deserve as much support as the families getting pushed out of Avondale and Logan Square by gentrification get.
posted by PMdixon at 6:13 AM on March 2, 2018 [9 favorites]


I can understand why these people want to stay, and I feel sad for them. However, their place will be gone, it's just a question of whether it will be in their lifetime or not. New Orleans is very probably gone too, in the long run.
posted by carter at 6:30 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Interesting article, thanks. It gets more complicated the further you go; I wouldn't suggest reading the first couple of paragraphs and thinking that you've got all the hot takes you need.

The sediment diversion plan is a really interesting wrinkle in all this. It's the one thing that will slow down the disappearance of the wetlands, but it also threatens to change them from brackish to fresh.

Getting the oil industry to pay to fix all the destruction it has accelerated would be a just outcome, as unlikely as the outcome is.
posted by clawsoon at 6:48 AM on March 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show them.
posted by flabdablet at 6:55 AM on March 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


This isn't Venice here

You're right, Venice is a ways away down in Plaquemines. Same side of the river though.
posted by CheeseLouise at 6:58 AM on March 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


Nothing "probably" about New Orleans. It's gone.

So is Miami, actually Miami is more certainly doomed than New Orleans since Miami is built on porous rock and can't even by dyked off while possibly New Orleans could be.

I feel sorry for the people in the article, but their community is doomed and that's just all there is to it. The government should spend money on them, but it needs to be money to relocate them not money wasted on a futile effort to sweep back the tide.
posted by sotonohito at 7:16 AM on March 2, 2018 [4 favorites]


Yeah you're right, sotonohito.
posted by carter at 7:37 AM on March 2, 2018


I kinda want to see weird future cities defying the forces of nature, but I also grew up being spoon fed buckminster fuller bullshit.

I _know_ it's bullshit but I still wanna see places do wild-ass force of nature defying shit that makes not one damn lick of sense to do. I can't help it I suppose.

Good thing I'm not in charge I spose.
posted by Annika Cicada at 7:55 AM on March 2, 2018 [7 favorites]


I remember growing up in Southern California, and every time the Pacific Ocean reclaimed one of the bluffs in Malibu, some couple would be interviewed on the local news standing at the edge of the now-smaller plot of land where their house used to be. "We love it here. Of course we are going to rebuild." With public money. On land that was also going to be plunging into the ocean eventually. Grrr...
posted by PhineasGage at 7:56 AM on March 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


Annika I'm with you emotionally. And really we do have the tech to save towns like this.

But there's unfortunately cost/benefit stuff to consider. It'd take some massive tech to save that town, and frankly 7,000 people just aren't worth it.

Maybe New Orleans could be a sort of hyper-Dutch place protected from the sea by massive carbon fiber walls or something. It'd cost billions, that's for sure.
posted by sotonohito at 8:12 AM on March 2, 2018 [1 favorite]


The parish, not surprisingly, has voted Republican by a 2:1 margin since 2000.

I do wonder whether they would support spending similar amounts of money helping 7,000 residents of Baltimore, Compton, or a Texas border town.
posted by Candleman at 10:17 AM on March 2, 2018 [3 favorites]


How to solve this problem, in two different ways:
1) Restore the river flow. Tear down the levees, fill in the artificial channels, revert it to the natural river bed (which will shift over time, obviously). Ban any oil extraction. Ban boat traffic over the size of a small fishing boat. Wait decades for it to work.

2) Stop paying Federal flood insurance money to people who live on unstable land inches above sea level.

Neither solution is attractive. I know which one would be better for the environment, in the long term... but it's not the same one I'd put my betting money on.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:33 AM on March 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


I do wonder whether they would support spending similar amounts of money helping 7,000 residents of Baltimore, Compton, or a Texas border town.

It's not a hypothetical question, given the Republican attitude towards the social safety net. To vote R in the last election in particular was to say "no one should be helped by the federal government...except me." (Also "I refuse to concede that climate change is happening, but I demand to be rescued from it when it does.")

Although, as usual, I'm sure the worst of the effects will land on the people too poor to have much civic engagement at all.
posted by praemunire at 11:34 AM on March 2, 2018 [5 favorites]


COME SEE THE FIGHT OF YOUR LIFE, ONE TIMELINE ONLY

WHITE PRIVILEGE VS CLIMATE CHANGE

will a just crazily white town in a state that is almost half non-white be able to overcome the NOT-SO-PRIMAL FORCES OF CLIMATE CHANGE? can enough old white folks with old-timey Louisiana ways convince the mostly-white state legislature that their plight is truly the most deserving of some billions of dollars of state money? will the New York Times ever get rid of whoever the hell keeps hiring reporters with race politics from like the fucking 1970s?
posted by runt at 1:11 PM on March 2, 2018 [12 favorites]


It's like the mayor heard the story of King Cnut and derived exactly the opposite lesson from it.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:23 PM on March 3, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Louisiana Environmental Apocalypse Road Trip - "Louisiana serves as a terrifying example of what can become of a state that shortchanges science and environmental regulations to boost industry and infrastructure."
posted by the man of twists and turns at 2:11 PM on March 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


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