Louisiana has started buying land on higher ground to relocate an island town along a bayou being swallowed by higher seas.
The Louisiana Office of Community Development announced Tuesday it will spend $11.7 million on a 515-acre tract of high ground to house about 80 residents of Isle de Jean Charles, an island that has lost 98% of its land area since 1955 as sea levels rise due to climate change.
Most of the town’s residents are members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians and the United Houma Nation.
Groundbreaking is expected next year at the resettlement project near Schriever in northern Terrebonne Parish—the culmination of many years of planning for people who long survived in isolation along Louisiana’s swampy coast.
Some in Isle de Jean Charles worry that 2019 may be too long a wait for their new homes. “We’re going to have to go through another hurricane season, maybe two,” Albert Naquin, chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians told NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune in December. “That makes us very, very edgy.”
Naquin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press today. Messages left for tribal council members of the United Houma Nation, which also is affected by the project, were not immediately returned.
