Louisiana Watershed Management

Lead Investigator: Rachelle Sanderson, Capital Region Planning Commission, rsanderson@crpcla.org

Natural Resource Managers: Chuck Berger (Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality); LaKesha Hart (Louisiana Office of Community Development); Capital Region Planning Commission

Project Team:  Thomas Douthat, Fahmida Akhter (Louisiana State University); Jerrod Penn, Sapana Bastola (LSU and LSU Agricultural Center); Ridgely Meyers, Brady Skaggs (Pontchartrain Conservancy); Victoria Nguyen (Capital Region Planning Commission)

Federal Program Officer/Point of Contact: Frank Parker (frank.parker@noaa.gov)

Award Amount: $115,482

Award Period: September 2021 – August 2023

Why it matters: Gulf ecosystems and communities are vulnerable to flooding hazards; however, programs to mitigate flooding and build resilience often fail to explicitly account for watershed-level ecosystem impacts and social vulnerability. If investments aimed at reducing flood vulnerability do not account for the varied resilience of communities and downstream environmental effects, they may overlook impacts to Gulf water resources and communities with fewer resources. After the August Floods of 2016 in Louisiana, an executive order from the Governor’s office asked five state agencies to coordinate around statewide flood risk by managing regional watersheds through the Louisiana Watershed Initiative (LWI). This project sought to improve watershed management through a stakeholder-driven planning process focused on developing a benefit-cost analysis (BCA) approach that incorporates additional social and environmental costs and benefits into LWI project selection.

What the team did: The project team conducted outreach and research to develop strategies for a BCA framework that reduces uncertainty in LWI project selection while also incorporating social vulnerability and nature-based approaches. First, the team conducted a literature review of BCA of flood mitigation to understand how studies incorporate vulnerability. Then, they analyzed applications from the first round of LWI funding to evaluate how existing BCA tools account for social and environmental impacts. The project team conducted 15 focus group sessions to explore challenges and opportunities for incorporating social and economic vulnerability and ecosystem services into BCA frameworks. They built upon these sessions with four stakeholder workshops designed to obtain feedback on data sources, conceptual models, and potential scenarios for incorporating social vulnerability and ecosystem services into project evaluations. 

Summary of Outcome: The project team’s workshops and focus groups fostered collaboration among researchers, planners, resource managers, and community representatives. The team’s literature review and analysis of existing applications produced recommendations for an improved BCA framework and analysis that highlighted key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats associated with current practices and proposed approaches. This new BCA framework tailored to Gulf Coast watersheds explicitly accounts for ecosystem services and social well-being.