Residents of New Orleans are beginning to look beyond Louisiana’s borders for a possible future, with community groups making exploratory trips to two Mississippi cities – Vicksburg and Natchez – as the reality of a warming planet and a sinking coastline forces a slow reckoning with the question of relocation. The conversations are tentative, driven by a coalition of local non-profits that have begun assessing whether these inland towns could serve as refuge for those displaced by future storms or the steady creep of the Gulf.
Defiance and disbelief
The immediate reaction to a study published in May that declared New Orleans had reached a “point of no return” because of the climate crisis was swift and angry. Helena Moreno, the city’s mayor, accused the researchers of chasing “publicity and clickbait headlines” rather than solutions, pointing out that Miami faces flooding and San Francisco wildfires and earthquakes, “yet no serious movement exists to declare those cities lost causes”. Others were blunter: Gordon Dove, head of Louisiana’s coastal restoration agency, called it “the most ridiculous study I have ever seen” and questioned the competence of the lead researcher, Torbjörn Törnqvist. Some locals posted defiant video clips from the city’s levees with captions such as “STOP TELLING US TO MOVE”, while others warned of a “modern day redlining of an entire city” and fretted about what would happen “when investors, insurers and young families read this”. A separate strand of anger was directed at the climate denial they said had been displayed by state and federal governments.
The science of a sinking city
Yet among the New Orleanians who contacted Törnqvist after reading about his work, the Tulane University academic found a more constructive reaction than the public outrage might suggest. “Of course it’s upsetting to hear this, but cities like New Orleans have an expiration date,” he said. “We’ve already crossed a tipping point of survivability for our coastal wetlands, the rate of sea level rise is way too high.” The data behind his warning is stark. Louisiana has lost an estimated 4,833 square kilometres of land over the past century – an area the size of Delaware – driven by sea level rise, land subsidence, levee construction, oil and gas extraction and the cutting of navigation canals. At current rates, some projections suggest parts of coastal Louisiana could be underwater within 50 to 80 years. Relative sea level in Southeast Louisiana is rising at about 9.24 mm per year, a combination of global sea level rise and the sinking of the deltaic soils. Some sections of New Orleans’ levee system are sinking by nearly two inches.
Törnqvist argues that a decision by Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, to cancel a $3bn project intended to revive the vanishing coastline by redirecting sediment carried by the Mississippi River amounts to a further “death penalty” for the city. He describes a future in which New Orleans becomes “like Venice, a few islands in a lagoon” – surrounded by open water as the coastline moves as much as 62 miles inland over the coming century. The process, he and his fellow researchers stress, will be gradual, taking several generations. For now, billions of dollars’ worth of levees, pumps and flood gates keep the water at bay. The city’s main defence is the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS), a $14.4bn network completed in 2018 that includes the 1.8-mile-long Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, built at a cost of roughly $1.1bn. Its yellow boom gates can swing shut in minutes to block a commercial canal. Jeff Williams, regional director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority, points out that these defences have performed well since Katrina, most recently holding back Hurricane Ida in 2021. But the levees themselves are sinking into the soft soils, requiring another $1bn to add a foot or two of height in places. “Flood protection is in our name but we don’t like to use those words,” Williams said. “We talk risk reduction.” The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has already spent $15bn on flood protection since Katrina.
A community’s search for higher ground
Despite the engineering, the economics of staying are becoming harder to ignore. New Orleans is already losing people – shrinking in four of the last five years to just over 360,000 residents – driven in part by some of the highest home insurance rates in the country. Average annual premiums range from $2,805 to $6,739 or more, with some areas more than double the national average, reflecting the city’s position as a bowl-shaped spit of marshland below sea level in a hurricane zone. Steve Picou, a musician and environmental planner, moved from his longtime New Orleans home three years ago after his annual insurance bill jumped from $900 to about $9,000 over two decades. He now lives in Opelousas, 130 miles north-west, at 66ft above sea level. “The whole concept of relocation is overwhelming for people, they don’t like to think about it,” he said. “But there’s no escaping this climate. Towns are going to have the opportunity to be receiver communities and they need to start thinking about that now.”
That thinking is already underway. A loose coalition of New Orleans community groups, led by the non-profit A Community Voice, which has about 9,000 members, has travelled in recent weeks to assess Vicksburg and Natchez, both roughly three hours away by car in neighbouring Mississippi. Vicksburg has been recognised by Site Selection magazine as a top location for economic development projects per capita along the Mississippi River corridor, with an economy driven by healthcare, retail and education. Its median household income was $45,781 in 2024 and its median property value $125,900, with a homeownership rate of 55%. Natchez, though less extensively profiled, has also welcomed the discussions. Debra Campbell, chair of A Community Voice, said there is nascent interest in acquiring or building properties in these cities for New Orleanians displaced by a storm similar to Hurricane Katrina – which flooded the city in 2005 after levee failures, displacing over 800,000 people and causing an estimated $150bn in damage. “We’re only going to leave if we’re forced to leave due to hurricanes, flooding and the heavy industrialization of our neighbourhoods,” Campbell said. In arranged meetings, residents and officials in Vicksburg and Natchez welcomed the idea of an influx, discussing the renovation of empty homes and the use of public facilities as temporary shelters. Campbell was direct: “I told them, ‘We’re coming. We’re coming in an exodus. We’re not coming to lay on your leg – we’re looking for employment. We want our kids in school.’”
Campbell’s own neighbourhood, the Seventh Ward, is majority-Black and few there want to leave permanently. So A Community Voice is searching for private funders to secure properties that could act as a climate refuge – a place to retreat to if uprooted by disaster, rather than a permanent move. “Nobody wants to leave home,” she said. “But we do know if something hits like Katrina, it will be a while before we can return. There may come a time where we can’t return home. This place will be underwater and no longer exist.” Data from the property intelligence company Cotality underscores the disparity in risk. New Orleans scores a 100 on a hazard risk scale based on floods, storms and other perils – the most severe rating. Natchez and Vicksburg score about 25 points lower, and inland cities like Montgomery, Alabama, are roughly half as risky. Cotality’s chief scientist, Howard Botts, explained: “The city is essentially a bowl surrounded by levees, and water will accumulate within that.”
Emotional ties and the cost of staying
For many who live in New Orleans, the thought of leaving is not just a logistical problem but an emotional one. The city is famous for jazz, Mardi Gras, beignets and Creole culture. Jazz, born in New Orleans, involves collective improvisation rooted in African, Caribbean and European traditions. Mardi Gras runs from Twelfth Night to Fat Tuesday, with parades, krewes and costumes. Beignets, served at Café du Monde and Café Beignet, are a symbol of everyday life. But it is more than that: it is a place of memories, family and belonging. Arthur Johnson, chief executive of the Lower Nine Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development in the Lower Ninth Ward – an area devastated by Katrina – argued for investment rather than retreat. “If you talk about leaving, it can be an excuse to not have economic development because you don’t have enough people, particularly in this community. Where do you move anyway? Where’s affordable?” The physical symbol of the determination to stay is the great wall of New Orleans, the Lake Borgne Surge Barrier, a concrete and steel structure 1.8 miles long. On a typical steamy June day, Jeff Williams stood on its parapet watching a barge for Nasa’s Artemis III project pass through its gates. “I don’t believe it’s a lost cause – I believe it’s a question of investment,” he said. “Southern Louisianans, long before this country ever even existed, have always adapted.”
Yet adaptation has limits. A.R. Siders, an expert in coastal relocation at the University of Delaware, notes that New Orleans faces a stark choice: become like Venice, with islands in a lagoon, or build 30ft levees that cut off the view of the coast. Venice’s own adaptation strategies have included movable barriers (the MOSE system, which only activates after tides exceed 110cm), ring dikes, and even the possibility of relocating the entire city – a project estimated at up to €100bn if sea levels rise beyond 4.5 metres, a scenario projected after 2300. Siders points out that there is no blueprint for a managed retreat of a city the size of New Orleans. “Most glaringly there are no state-level plans for this – we are waiting for one state to be brave enough to commit and take action.” The Trump administration slashed programs that help communities escape climate impacts, and even much smaller resettlements in Alaska have been plagued by problems. Siders worries about a slow death: “Slow demise is the default, not just for New Orleans but for Miami and Wilmington and lots of other places. I’m worried we are all sitting around and hoping, playing chicken and hoping that someone else will come in and solve the problem later on.”
The city could choose to defend only its historic, tourist-thronged core, or gradually shift its centre of gravity northwards with tax breaks and incentives. There is time, but the clock is ticking – and every 30 minutes, Louisiana loses an area of land equivalent to a football field.
