How neighborhoods in New Orleans are addressing urban flooding

Often, these planter boxes have paintings of important figures in the community, like the late Jim Hayes, a local activist. Austin talks about the neighborhood she grew up knowing and loving. She said it was a fun place to grow up because there was always something going on, and a bar, church or funeral parlor on almost every corner of this community.

“Treme, in my opinion, is the cultural mecca of New Orleans, only second to the French Quarters,” Austin said. “I like to say, we always knew where our parents were. They were in either one of these places: praying, partying or no longer here.”

But some of that version of Treme changed when the city built the I-10 interstate in the 1960s. Before, the community was known as the Sixth Ward and was populated with families and lots of kids. Today, Austin — who still lives in the neighborhood — said she sees more commercial property in the area than family homes.

“We don't have that now. We have more short-term rentals than anything,” Austin said.

Austin is the executive director of the Greater Treme Consortium, a nonprofit focused on community development. Aside from commercialization, a major problem they’re addressing is urban flooding. It happens when rainfall overwhelms the stormwater drainage capacity of a densely populated area.

“It’s very traumatic. It brings on anxiety. It brings on... not being in control,” Austin said.

After a series of flooding events from late 2023 to early 2024, residents decided to go to the New Orleans City Council to ask them to look into what was causing the issue in the neighborhood. They also sent information to the Department of Justice, asking them to investigate the area.

In the meantime, Treme residents are getting creative with how to address urban flooding themselves.

Austin points to the rain garden outside of her office. Rain gardens are designed to capture runoff from hard surfaces, like a sidewalk or a driveway. The water is then filtered into the soil, rather than running off to the street. To mimic nature, Austin only uses plants native to Louisiana. They’re a little brown thanks to a recent uncharacteristic freeze that hit New Orleans in late January.

This is one form of water management known as green infrastructure. Austin said the rain garden collects about 335 gallons of water whenever it rains, which helps people understand what can be done to detain water.

Getting community involvement is vital to the work the Greater Treme Consortium and its partners do, Austin said. Residents of Treme and other neighborhoods suffering from flooding issues were invited to complete a survey to make recommendations on the stormwater drainage system in New Orleans.

But while community groups are taking this work on, Austin said they need government help, too.

“What we have is a chronic flooding issue here that needs to be taken on by our elected officials and not just the community,” Austin said.

Austin said they don't get funding from the city for their work.

“The flooding has been taking place for years now. It's not their fault. It's not probably our utility company's fault. It's everybody's concern, and everybody should be a part of what needs to happen,” Austin said.

Meagan Williams, the urban water program manager for the City of New Orleans, said she’s seen this type of flooding become exacerbated in the last few decades for a few reasons.

First, New Orleans is surrounded by levees, so it’s within a bowl. It’s a very rainy city that’s seeing much more frequent and intense rainfall events in general. And, it sits on swampy marsh land, which is a clay material.

“If you can think about a piece of Play-Doh, it doesn't really absorb water very well,” Williams said. “So what happens for us when it rains, is all that water just sits on top of our soil, on top of grass and it doesn't infiltrate at all.”

New Orleans also has a lot of pavement and hard surfaces that don’t absorb water, either. On top of that, it’s an old city with old infrastructure. You can see the culmination of all that in a neighborhood like Treme.

“It is a historic Black neighborhood. They sit near a lot of landmarks also, which make it a little bit more difficult to be innovative in some of the solutions that we may propose in those areas,” Williams said.

The city is currently making a big push for green infrastructure as one of its flood mitigation strategies, butthere are challenges along the way. Williams said there isn’t a lot of funding for this type of drainage infrastructure, and the city has had to get creative with how to get it.

Some of the neighborhoods where the city has implemented these strategies are in Mid-City and Gentilly — particularly in Pontchartrain Park, another historic Black neighborhood that’s been added to the Historic Landmark Commission. It’s also done some work in the Lafitte Greenway. There are also other projects not yet constructed.

Williams said Hurricane Katrina was a big turning point in the way New Orleans approaches drainage and flood solutions.

It led city leaders to start a series called the Dutch Dialogues, where they talked with Dutch colleagues about how they live with water.

“That led to a plan back in 2013 called the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan. The whole idea behind it was living with water. How do you live with water as an asset versus as an enemy?” Williams said.

Williams said her office is in the process of doing drainage studies to better understand New Orleans’ drainage system. The city wants to have a data-driven approach that aligns with community efforts.

“We are working with a couple of community agencies to think about how we re-envision some of the spaces that people use often, and make sure that we are addressing the flooding issue in some of these neighborhoods,” Williams said.

Back in Treme, Cheryl Austin shows some final examples of green infrastructure, like the rain gardens and planter boxes to hold water. The Greater Treme Consortium has partnered with groups like Water Wise Gulf South to implement more of it.

They also took inspiration from a trip to Amsterdam to study and figure out what they were doing to prevent flooding.

“What I took away from that in order for them to be successful, with flood prevention, is that everyone is incorporated into the process, the grassroots people, the organizations, the corporations, the residents, the government,” Austin said.

Meanwhile, the consortium and its partners hired an engineering firm to help them identify why flooding persists in some street corners, like Dumaine and North Robertson. Austin said they should have more information by the end of May.

This story was produced by the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration between Mississippi Public Broadcasting, WBHM in Alabama, WWNO and WRKF in Louisiana and NPR.