There is a version of New Orleans that might not exist by the time I am fifty. The streets I walk, the neighborhoods I know, the bayous that frame this city. Gone, or close enough to it. I want to talk about that.
What I Knew and When I Knew It
I grew up here. Went to school here. I knew about Katrina the way everyone in this city knows about Katrina: it is part of the air. But coastal land loss, the slow kind, the kind that has been happening since before I was born, that took longer to understand.
The number that finally made it real for me was this one: Louisiana loses a football field of land every 90 to 100 minutes. Not in storms. Not in disasters. Just on a regular Tuesday. The coast is dissolving at a rate so consistent you could set a clock to it.
I started pulling on that thread. I learned that the state has lost more than 2,000 square miles of coastal land since the 1930s. I learned that the levees built to protect New Orleans from flooding are part of what is killing the coast, because they prevent the Mississippi River from depositing the sediment that used to replenish the land. I learned that the oil and gas industry dredged over 10,000 miles of canals through the marshes, letting saltwater in and killing the wetland vegetation that held everything together. I learned that the land is literally sinking beneath us, and the Gulf is rising to meet it.
The more I understood, the harder it was to look away.
What I Decided to Do About It
I am not a politician or a scientist or a policy expert. I am a person who loves this place and is not ready to accept that it will be underwater.
So I did two things. I built ShoreSafe, a machine-learning web application that predicts coastal erosion risk for any location in Louisiana. And I built this site.
Root4LA is where I put everything I learn. The history, the science, the cultures at risk, the organizations doing real work. It is a place to understand what is happening, and to find ways to respond to it.
It is also, honestly, just a place to love Louisiana in public. Because this coast is worth loving. The food, the music, the people, the bayous, the birds, the way the light looks at dusk over Lake Pontchartrain. All of it is worth fighting for.
What This Site Is For
If you live in Louisiana, this site is for you. If you grew up here and moved away, it is for you. If you just got here last week, it is for you. The coast does not care how long you have been around. It is disappearing for all of us.
Read the land loss history. Learn about the communities whose cultures are inseparable from this coast. Find organizations you can volunteer with or donate to. Check out ShoreSafe and see what the erosion risk looks like where you live.
And if you want to talk, reach out. I am still learning all of this, and I am better at it with other people.