Data suggests bayou communities are moving northward, accelerated by Ida

When hurricanes surge saltwater onto the coast, it's more than the soil that erodes. The communities that live there are washed away, too.

Terrebonne and Lafourche's coasts have experienced a relentless yearly loss of land and people as both the landscape and the communities drift away. Hurricanes exacerbate both problems, experts say. And while some portion of the populations trickle back, most won't return. Both parishes have seen a migration from their coastal communities since at least 2016, and school enrollment and water bills appear to confirm the trend.

"What you do see is storms tend to accelerate existing patterns of population change," LSU Professor Emeritus of Geography Craig Colten said.

Josh Manning, a planner with the South Central Planning and Development Commission, explained that Terrebonne and Lafourche have been moving inland since 2016 due to cultural and economic factors. The migration is stronger in Terrebonne due to its bonds with the oilfield.

The nation as a whole, he said, has seen the least economic growth since the 1930s, which has caused people to drift closer to metro areas to find employment. According to Manning, the first part of the decade was good for the region because the price of oil was high. As things started to turn south for the oil sector, Terrebonne and Lafourche's people began to move north.

New technology such as fracking made it cheaper and easier for other parts of the country to access oil, and changes in the automotive industry like electric vehicles, hybrids and higher fuel economy standards also began to eat away at the oil sector's profits.

"This has made things difficult for the oil industry locally, and our unemployment rates have risen," Manning explained via email. "People are following jobs and, unfortunately, sometimes that means moving out of the area. While oil extraction is still a part of the Lafourche Parish economy, we see a little more stability there as the economy, especially in the Thibodaux area, is a little more diversified with the university and easier access to some of the refinery plants along the Mississippi River."

The Water Institute's Senior Research Scientist Scott Hemmerling has studied coastal population migration trends from the 1950s through to present caused by economic and environmental factors.

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He said coastal communities tend to want to remain where they have formed, and that Hurricane Ida alone will likely not force Terrebonne residents to move northward past Houma, with one exception.

"It's never going to be a singular event that drives people out. If you see a second Ida or something of that level hit Houma, that's where you might start seeing the population loss," he said. "I think Houma is kind of the magnet for a lot of those bayou communities to move up to."

People will move more northward for the levee protection system but not vacate entirely. Communities are built on a foundation comprised of family, their homes and the community centers. As each piece is removed, the likelihood of a person moving away increases, Hemmerling explained.

Census data, he explained, is useful for portraying migrations, but the hurricane struck shortly after the census was taken, expanding the margin for error. Its accuracy will improve over time, but for now researches will have to look at other forms of data to fill in the picture.

Schools are one version of a community center. Enrollment for down the bayou schools of both parishes have been trending downward for years. The driving factor at the heart of the recent Terrebonne Parish School Board debate over whether to rebuild Grand Caillou Elementary was the school's eroding population trend spanning nearly a decade.

Officials suggested combining the destroyed school with a northern school, Oaklawn Jr. High, to utilize the recovery money to support both populations. Members of the Grand Caillou community rallied at each meeting to argue to retain their school, fearing that the loss of it would be one less anchor holding their community together. When the final vote was cast, Board Member Clyde Hamner was the sole vote against the motion.

Grand Caillou Elementary currently has 40 students enrolled in its pre K, and feeds into Grand Caillou Middle, and the school's enrollment has declined by 28% iin the past five years. Hamner said the cost to rebuild the school is roughly $20 million, and if the declining enrollment continues, there will be very few students left when the new one is built.

"The population was trending down and not up, and my concern was we'd rebuild a school for a very few students," Hamner said.

Another data point suggesting population movement is water usage. Water bills alone do not indicate people leaving or staying as families can move in together and share a bill. Overall usage in Terrebonne was down, prior to Ida, and in Lafourche remained the same, but usage was shifting northward.

In Lafourche, water utility bills are divided into four areas: area 1 includes the area from the Assumption Parish line to St. Charles Community Bridge, Choupic, Chackbay, Choctaw and Kraemer; area 2 includes the St. Charles Community Bridge to Raceland, plus Bayou Blue and the Des Allemands areas; area 3 includes Raceland to Larose; and area 4 is from Larose to Jefferson Parish.

Area 1 gained 190 paying customers, but every other portion lost. Utilities are down 535 customers total, with the most concentrated being area 4, which lost 506.

Terrebonne Parish does not have this data yet because their last published engineer's report took place just before Hurricane Ida struck. From 2016 until 2021, customers and water usage both decreased. 2021 itself had a slight jump in customers, rising by 309 paying customers per month, but water usage per month decreased by 300 gallons.

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Data suggests bayou communities are moving northward, Ida accelerated