Lake Charles, LA Had Highest Outmigration Rate In US In 2020 - 6.7% Of Its Residents Left

[hatrack]

In early May, President Joe Biden stood in front of the 70-year old Calcasieu River Bridge in Lake Charles, Louisiana. With the aging bridge in the background, he spoke about the hurricanes that have battered the town over the last year, emphasizing the need for infrastructure to adapt to the increasing severity of storms influenced by climate change. “The people of Louisiana always have picked themselves up, just like America always picks itself up,” he said, adding that the U.S. needs to “build back in a way that all we build is better able to withstand storms.”

But sometimes, the best way to build back better might be to just pick up and build elsewhere. Just 10 miles from the bridge where Biden gave his speech, the Greinwich Terrace neighborhood of Lake Charles has been slated by the state of Louisiana for optional buyouts — a program where the government will buy property that is frequently affected by flooding, allowing the residents to relocate out of harm’s way.

Lake Charles has been hit by four federally declared weather disasters in the last year, including Hurricanes Delta, Laura, and Zeta, plus Winter Storm Viola. At the end of May it was once again hit with a once-in-a-century rainstorm, causing widespread flooding. The repeated disasters have taken a toll. “We are a very resilient people. We are a very strong population,” Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said after May’s flooding. “But, you know, eventually you do kind of get to a point where you ask Mother Nature: What more can you do to us?” Some have already chosen to leave — Lake Charles had the biggest outward migration of population in the country last year, with 6.7 percent of residents leaving — perhaps in part due to displacement by the storms.

The $30 million voluntary buyout program announced by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on the heels of May’s floods suggests that part of the way forward for Lake Charles residents is to get out of harm’s way. The buyouts are a part of a larger $1.2 billion federal mitigation grant to the state of Louisiana from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant Mitigation (CDBG-MIT) program. In other words, it’s a pool of money designed to be spent on making a community more resilient now so it won’t need as much disaster recovery later. In this case, the money will likely fund buyouts for 90 to 100 homes in the neighborhood, says Pat Forbes, executive director of the Louisiana Office of Community Development. The land parcels, once purchased, cannot be redeveloped with housing or businesses, says Forbes, but will be reserved for uses like parks, soccer fields, or wetlands, that will allow for the land to be returned to the floodplain and absorb stormwater in future flooding events.

EDIT

https://grist.org/climate/this-louisiana-neighborhood-is-retreating-in-the-face-of-climate-change-lake-charles/

[Probatim]

1. You can be present your argument with data time and again. In this instance,

it's 4 major weather disasters and a "once in a century" rainstorm that global climate change is affecting the US - and the Rs will tell you we "are members of a cult".

When you are hit with storms that are "once in a century" and "once in 500 years" in the same summer, data tells you something is out of whack.