New Orleans is going underwater: physically and financially. Coastal erosion, rising sea levels, increasing temperatures, sinking and the consequential risks of flooding and storms have led some experts to believe it may not be possible to save.

It is a pattern echoed across coastal America. Globally, 10 other major cities are at risk of disappearing before the year 2100, including Miami, Houston, Bangkok and Venice. Long before then, however, rising insurance costs and struggling housing markets in places at risk of extreme weather are already threatening habitability.
Causes of New Orleans’ sinking can largely be tied back to profit-motivated choices that neglected the city’s geography, such as oil and gas drilling and the choice of the location as a strategic port city, despite knowing it was unsafe, even back in 1718. Environmental Science and AP Biology teacher Nikolai Curtis said choices like this are a pattern across American coastal cities.

“The United States is a short-term thinking society, where immediate profitability tends to overrule long-term profitability and impact,” Curtis said. “This is a long-term issue that will most likely result in serious consequences. Coastal communities rely on their coastal areas, they will have to deal with the economic consequences from damage…, rises in insurance rates, declines in tourism and impacts upon their fishery industry.”
Damage caused by rising sea levels contributes to rising insurance rates. Curtis said saltwater can corrode properties and possessions.

“Ask a person in a coastal town how often they wash their car,” Curtis said. “If they’re smart, they do it every few weeks to prevent salt buildup from dried surf. During this past summer, we saw examples of the impact of sea level rise in North Carolina, where beach homes that were built on stilts collapsed because of water intruding further in the mainland.”

Sophomore Larklin Andrews has family in southern Louisiana. She explained that without people buying houses, many residents cannot afford to leave.

“People aren’t buying houses down here because of that reason – they don’t want it to be underwater in a few years,” Andrews said. “So if they can’t sell their house, they don’t have money to buy a new house, and they can’t just leave.”
Amid a $160 million budget deficit as of October, New Orleans did not receive the $120 million it was expecting from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The funds were supposed to come as part of the $2 billion “Joint Infrastructure Recovery Request” program, which pooled post-Katrina funding to help mend its neglected roads and drainage infrastructure. Many officials blamed the loss partially on President Donald Trump’s policies against “sanctuary cities,” or cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Trump first threatened to withhold funding for sanctuary cities in 2017.

In contrast to New Orleans, Amsterdam’s strong drainage infrastructure has been key to its success in protecting against the sea. This, along with a less hurricane-prone location, has allowed Amsterdam to maintain measurably safer conditions despite its similarities to New Orleans as a port city.

Curtis noted Louisiana’s lack of coastal erosion regulations as contributing to its vulnerability.

“Some states, such as Georgia, have relatively strong regulations regarding coastal erosion,” Curtis said. “Others such as Louisiana have relatively poor regulations and are seeking to deregulate these regions. I’ve been attending workshops in Dauphin Island, Alabama for the last few years, and while there has been an increase in oversight, regulation and coastal recovery efforts, it is still moving very slowly in regard to what needs to be addressed.”

Keith Kenney, 72, is the grandfather of Andrews and lives about 50 miles south of New Orleans. He said many of the islands he grew up with have essentially disappeared.

“When I was a child, and I’m talking about in the 60s, there was one island that I used to go to and at low tide I could almost walk across one of the passes from the bays north of the island to the Gulf of Mexico,” Kenney said. “Today, if I go out to that same pass, it probably takes me about 15 minutes to cross it in a motorboat at 30 miles an hour.”

Such conditions have contributed to Louisiana’s status as the state with the sixth-highest emigration in 2023. Additionally, many moved to Georgia following Hurricane Katrina.

“I’ve been teaching here since 2002, and we received an influx of around 30 students and one administrator from New Orleans after the events of Hurricane Katrina,” Curtis said. “They were clearly impacted as they needed support services due to losing most of their material possessions. I had a few students who only had one change of clothes when they fled. Most of those students did not return to New Orleans.”

Many Louisiana residents are willing to stay despite risks, but Andrews explained others simply cannot afford to leave.

“Locals [are impacted], but probably more so people who live south of New Orleans who are in poverty,” Andrews said. “They don’t have resources or money just to up and leave without being able to sell their house.”
Kenney noted key industries like fishing and trade are disappearing.

“From an economic standpoint, [there are] serious impacts because they are now closer to the Gulf of Mexico than they were 50 years ago,” Kenney said. “Therefore, when a storm hits our area, there’s no buffer, meaning land or swamp or marsh or islands, to protect the inland side of the coast from high-water wind.”

Natural disasters like hurricanes cost Louisiana billions. Often, what residents lose is unrecoverable.

“My inheritance is sinking,” Andrews said. “They’re not gonna refund us. My college is literally falling into the ocean.”
Kenney blames the majority of the issue on engineering failures.

“I think climate change contributes to it,” Kenney said. “I think our problem, the majority of it, is a conscious decision made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the channelization of rivers and streams in Louisiana.”

Following Katrina, much of the damage was blamed on the USACE’s design failures. Whereas canals in Amsterdam are extremely effective for protecting the city, the USACE’s channels harm marshlands and allow saltwater to seep into the land.

Improvements in levees and other systems were put in place following Katrina, but Andrews said many homes have already been lost to the sea.

“There are some parts of Louisiana that you can drive by and the only thing left is the road, and you will see houses on either side of it that are submerged, either partially or fully,” Andrews said. “I haven’t seen a whole lot of them, but my grandfather has driven us out there just to see the effects of it.”

People over the age of 60 made up 71% of the deaths in Katrina. Curtis believes this trend has the potential to continue in future disasters.

“This is also a safety issue, as we’ve seen with major cities dealing with flooding, such as New Orleans, Los Angeles and Houston,” Curtis said. “Evacuations are never easy, and people who can’t leave are in the most danger, specifically older, disabled and sick people.”

Andrews noted increasing temperatures and rates of sea level rise pose concerns for the future.

“My aunt’s house got hit really badly in one of the last few hurricanes, and it just took so long to get fixed,” Andrews said. “Every year more and more goes under, and so people are losing their homes, and there’s that worry of like, will it be someone you know next time?”

Curtis said storm-related events aren’t the biggest threats to regions like coastal Louisiana.

“The bigger problem is the daily impact from rising sea levels,” Curtis said. “The daily effects add up over time, leading to a compromise of natural and man-made structures.”

Thousands of islands and dozens of island nations are at risk of disappearing. Curtis believes global action is necessary to save threatened regions.

“Coastal resilience is important for all coast areas,” Curtis said. “This isn’t just a U.S. problem, this is a worldwide problem.”