Louisiana Sets Up $30M Buyout Program for Flood-Prone Lake Charles Neighborhood

Louisiana is offering a $30 million voluntary buyout program to residents of a neighborhood that has flooded three times in recent years, Gov. John Bel Edwards said on May 21.

Recent rains brought the latest floods to the Greinwich Terrace neighborhood in Lake Charles, a city which was hit by Hurricanes Laura and Delta last year and Harvey in 2017.

“This program gives our residents a reason to be optimistic about the future, no matter how painful the present,” Mayor Nic Hunter said in a news release from the governor’s office.

The money is from a $1.2 billion federal mitigation grant the state announced in 2018 and received access to in September, after plans were drawn up and approved.

The “floods are a painful reminder of the devastation water continues to inflict on our state — something the people of Southwest Louisiana know all too well — and how urgent it is that we continue making investments to create more resilient, sustainable communities,” Edwards said on Friday.

The buyout program will be managed by the Louisiana Watershed Initiative, which Edwards created in 2018 to manage flood-reduction programs within areas defined by waterways rather than along parish lines.

“We’ve been working with the Louisiana Watershed Initiative to identify solutions that address the impacts of recent storms, and recently zeroed in on the Greinwich Terrace neighborhood as a community best suited for this program,” Calcasieu Parish Police Jury President Brian Abshire said. “These buyouts will not only deliver immediate relief to the residents of this area who want to relocate out of harm’s way but also provide greater capacity to store water and benefit many more throughout the floodplain and beyond.”

Topics Louisiana Flood