In Louisiana, Land Along the Coast Is Disappearing

Louisiana’s land is disappearing for many reasons: rising sea levels, erosion, wetland degradation, and more frequent severe storms all contributed to a loss of more than 2,000 square miles of coastline between 1932 and 2015, according to estimates from the state’s government. 

These risks are expected to increase over the next 25 years. A Climate Central analysis showed the likelihood of coastal flooding in the U.S. will increase tenfold by 2050, affecting an estimated 2.5 million people. Louisiana ranked fourth in the analysis’ list of states with the most people at risk, but tops the list for the amount of land it is expected to lose to flooding by 2050, at about 9,200 square miles. 

Cities like New Orleans have built structural protections called levees to abate the land loss, but some flood-prone rural areas have been left to weather the coming storms without such protection. 

A new home-elevation project led by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is an attempt to change this — if they can get the rural communities on board. 

In the rural parishes of Calcasieu, Cameron, and Vermillion, the so-called Southwest Coastal Louisiana Home Elevation Project allocates more than $400 million to raise the heights of residents’ homes by placing them on stilts or laying thicker foundations. About 3,900 properties have been identified in the three parishes to have a severe risk of flooding and could potentially qualify for the program. 

The Corps broke ground on the first home in October of 2024, but since then community participation in the project has been much lower than anticipated — even though it comes at no cost to approved applicants. 

To understand why this is, the advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund conducted focus groups of residents from the three parishes. The reasons they found ranged from high levels of skepticism and distrust of the project to a history of abandonment by the state and federal governments during past hurricane seasons. 

In 2020, after Hurricane Laura made landfall in southwestern Louisiana on top of Cameron Parish, some communities in the region had to wait a year or longer to receive disaster aid. Many homes required significant repairs, making people less willing to go through yet another construction project.

“A good amount of these residents expressed that they have had really bad experiences with contractors that have come and done work on their homes,”  said Allie Olsonoski, project manager of climate resilient coasts and watersheds for the Environmental Defense Fund. 

Olsonoksi was at the focus groups as they happened and wrote a report on the key takeaways. Among them, she found that homeowners want assurance that they won’t be held liable if something goes wrong with the construction. 

“There is a level of distrust of government intervention in the first place,” Olsonoski said. “‘Mr. Federal Government’ coming in and changing communities, people are weary of that.”

There were also questions about how the project could affect participants’ homeowners insurance. The cost of insurance in Louisiana is 44% higher than the national average because of the state’s high flood risk, according to a 2025 LendingTree analysis. 

While the project does not require applicants to have flood insurance, some residents have wondered if their participation in the program could help lower their flood insurance premiums. But there are also questions about how their homeowners insurance could be affected by factors like wind if their homes are higher in the air. 

So far, no one involved in the project’s rollout is comfortable answering these questions, according to Olsonoski. 

“There are just question marks around that that no one is able to answer at this moment in time, but hopefully as homes are elevated, that becomes illuminated,” she said. 

Even with the concerns people had, Olsonoski said there was still hope from many of the residents about the project’s potential to help them “adapt in place” to a changing climate. 

“If there is an opportunity for them to make their homes safer into the future so that they may be passed down to their kids and grandchildren, like those homes were passed down to them, that’s a really, really important and exciting opportunity,” she said. 

“This [project] allows them to be in the same spot down the block from their neighbors, their friends, their family.” More information about the project and how to apply can be found here.