SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SOLUTIONS

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“After years of planning, some 40 homeowners will have the opportunity to move to the new community that they’ve named Audubon Estates,” the Advocate reported, noting many Pecan Acres residents are low- to moderate-income and moved to the area after previously living on nearby sharecropping land.

The new town is about two miles from the oft-deluged Pecan Acres.

Once all residents move from Pecan Acres, the area will be restored to a wetland that could help mitigate regional flooding.The Advocate reported that Pecan Acres was built in the late ‘60s and ‘70s on a parish dumpsite that previously was low-lying swampland, making it vulnerable to floods. 

Many in the neighborhood couldn’t afford flood insurance, which is needed to obtain federal grants for flood repairs.

Efforts to curb flooding in the Baton Rouge-area town by installing pumps and other measures failed.

The inability of pumps and infrastructure to resolve flooding could be a canary in the coal mine warning that retreat could be the only ultimate solution in below or barely above sea level cities in Florida and Louisiana.