Excerpted from  The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle.

As Louisiana’s coast disappears, its historic communities are disappearing too

When officials in Pointe-aux-Chenes, Louisiana, announced in March 2021 they were closing the local elementary school, tensions ran high. The bayou had no museum, no archive, no dedicated historian. Without a space to pass down traditions to the next generation, what would the town have left?

No one who lived in Pointe-aux-Chenes, Louisiana could deny that the town’s population was shrinking. People had been leaving for decades, driven out by frequent floods and the decline of the local shrimping industry.

Still, losing the elementary school felt like an unnecessary escalation, one that would push the town further toward depopulation and decay.

The school had one of the largest Indigenous populations of any in the state. Teachers made a point of educating students about the rich history of the bayou, bringing in tribal leaders to demonstrate ceremonial dances and drum rituals.

Even more painful was the fact that the closure had come just a few years after the Army Corps of Engineers had finished a new levee system, part of a massive bayou protection project that the agency had been working on since Hurricane Katrina.

A month later, The Terrebonne Parish School Board convened to take a final vote on the closure. Although a few board members seemed moved by the locals’ show of support, it wasn’t enough: The board voted to shut the school down. 

The school closure hit residents Mary and Alton Verdin hard. They began to question their future in Pointe-aux-Chenes. Then Hurricane Ida struck.

The storm strengthened Alton and Mary’s resolve to stay on the bayou. They figured if their house had survived Ida, it could survive just about anything, and they didn’t want to abandon their ailing hometown as it began the tortuous recovery process.

The next summer, as residents slowly made their way back to the bayou, state lawmakers decided to reopen Pointe-aux-Chenes Elementary, giving the area a new lease on life.

Photographs:  Getty Images,  Jake Bittle,  Associated Press  Produced by Grist Audience

As Louisiana’s coast disappears, its historic communities are disappearing too

Excerpted from The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration  by Jake Bittle.

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Jake Bittle is a staff writer at Grist who covers climate impacts and adaptation.