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Assignment: Losing Louisiana

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Losing Louisiana

27/08/2015 GMT

BBC World Service - Assignment, Losing Louisiana

Meet the community struggling to survive on one of the world’s fastest eroding coastlines

Coastal erosion is washing away a football field of land every hour. Meet one community facing the reality of losing their past and their future.

Ten years ago Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, leaving over 1800 people dead and causing billions of dollars of damage. It was dramatic and destructive - but Katrina has been described as 'like a cold suffered by a cancer patient'. The cancer is the erosion of the coastal wetlands of Southern Louisiana, a slow motion environmental disaster that has continued almost unabated since Katrina. Caused by the taming of the Mississippi and oil and gas exploration, a football field of coastal land washes away every hour, and with it the homes, places and livelihoods that have sustained the storied Cajun culture. James Fletcher travels to Bayou Lafourche and the town of Leeville to get to know one community facing the reality of losing their past and their future.

Produced and presented by James Fletcher

(Photo: A shrimp boat on Bayou Lafourche, southern Louisiana)

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