DULAC — The late summer sun beats down on Bayou Dulac’s winding docks, radiating heat.
The shrimp boat captain known as “Lucky” raised anchor and pushed out into the bay. On the other side of the bayou, several locals were casting nets from a small wooden dock.
Brad DeFelice watched from the shadows, pointing to the land behind the fishermen across the bayou. He said investors from Florida will soon redevelop it as a fishing camp. The man who previously owned the property had lived there for many years, but decided to move north of Houma to retire. He said he was lucky to find a cash buyer. Otherwise, it would be impossible to sell a home down the bayou, he said.
The landscape changes as you wind your way up and down roads that wind through coastal wetlands.
It’s no longer just the steady onslaught of coastal erosion that strips away wetlands and draws salt water further north. Now, as the insurance crisis and fragile recovery from Hurricane Ida grip coastal Louisiana, communities like Dulac and Chauvin are also seeing their identities fade.
Bayou towns that have long been an important part of Louisiana’s cultural and economic firmament are experiencing an exodus of longtime shrimpers and fishermen, residents say. On their behalf, out-of-towners are buying up properties for cash and building vacation fishing camps.
Across bayous in this part of Louisiana, fresh wooden frames of vacation homes are popping up next to properties that have been lying in rubble since 2021’s Hurricane Ida.
A longtime neighborhood dive bar in Chauvin is up for sale. Across the bayou, a long-established seafood restaurant is closing. All local schools are closed and students must take buses to Houma.
Wearing the ubiquitous white shrimp boots here, DeFelice said it seems like “everyone” is moving north, to higher ground. DeFelice himself moved to Houma several years ago from along the bayou. And the shrimp trade is not what it used to be. Cheap imports continue to flood the market, putting pressure on the shrimpers and processors who make a living on the bayou.
DeFelice and co-worker Erin Phillips trudged around the pier at David Chauvin Seafood Company, cleaning water pipes and preparing for the start of white shrimp season. Phillips, who lives nearby, said he’s noticed oysters popping up in the bayou, thanks to saltwater intrusion that physically reshapes the area and strips away the marsh.
Looking out over the brackish waters, DeFelice echoed the sentiment often expressed by longtime residents: “I love this place.”
“Not a single bite.”
For centuries, people have lived in the farthest reaches of Louisiana’s winding bayou. Once upon a time, Bayou Petit Caillou, home to communities from Houma to Cocodrie, was connected to the Mississippi River before it changed course to the east. That was before man-made levees encircled the waterway and channeled the muddy streams into the bay.
Along the depths of the bay, not far from where the shore drops into the bay, Native American mounds rise from the side of the road. The mound was built in 1000 A.D., and the oak tree at its top is believed to mark the grave of a member of the Biloxi Nation. A century ago, Europeans began using the sides of the mound as burial grounds.
Laura Chaisson, chief chief of the United Homa Nation, one of the coastal Louisiana tribes, said it feels like communities that have lived along the bayou for centuries are being pushed out. . She estimates that her settlement, Pointe-aux-Chênes, has lost up to a fifth of its population in recent years.
Breaking point: Louisiana’s insurance crisis
Louisiana residents fear insurance premiums could wipe out their hurricane-prone towns.
Read more about the crisis and its impact here.
Chaisson is doing everything he can to stay. She raised her home to 11 feet, installed a metal roof and installed hurricane windows. And although her home held up relatively well during Ida, she said it suffered about $50,000 in damage.
Still, the insurance crisis weighs heavily on her community. Her monthly mortgage payment has tripled. She put her home on the market last year.
“I can’t eat a single bite,” she said. “There isn’t one.”
“Skeleton Town”
As part of her doctoral dissertation, Jessica Sims, a program officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, spent years interviewing people in coastal Louisiana as the coastal land loss crisis displaced them. I did it.
Sims often heard people say they were determined to stay. But since Ida, many have packed up and moved north. If that happens, Sims says, the community will fall apart. No “conscious effort” is required to track the migration.
The exception is Jean-Charles Island, where the first community to be relocated with federal funding was due to climate change risks. The community was located outside the levee, and the state used federal grants to relocate many of its residents several miles north.
Insurance crises are different. The state isn’t buying out people who can’t sell their homes. Some people are retiring, others dropping their insurance or increasing their deductibles.
Meanwhile, the natural charm of bayou communities attracts outsiders who purchase property to use as fishing camps.
“Local residents are being replaced by wealthy people who don’t live there full-time and aren’t part of the community,” Sims said.
Brittany Hamby, 38, has lived in Houma since she was 13 years old. She has been building housing equity for six years by taking a lease on her home in the southernmost part of Houma. She raised her three children here. One still lives with his girlfriend. Humvee tried to cling to the place he had lived for 25 years.
Her daughter now lives in Shreveport and her Humvee is not far away. Disappointed with Houma’s future and faced with insurance claims they can’t afford, Hamby and his family pack up and move 340 miles north to Houghton.
“Before you know it, it’s going to become a skeleton city,” Hamby said.
An insurance crisis is intensifying along about 30 miles of highway in Terrebonne Parish.
Bayou roots are fraying
A sign in front of the facility’s office on the shrimp pier in Du Lac has words written in English and Vietnamese that show respect for the immigrant communities that support the shrimp trade.
Inside, fans were stirring to beat the sweltering heat. Kim Chauvin cooked hamburgers on the stove. The Chauvin Parish councilor has been vocal about the changing tides in Dulac and her eponymous hometown on the opposite shore of Lake Boudreau.
“We’re seeing a lot of these bayous become tourist destinations,” Chauvin said. “It would be a real shame to miss it.”
Chauvin and her husband married at age 18 and purchased the Dulac facility after the BP oil spill so they could relocate their backyard shrimp processing plant.
Chauvin said he welcomes investments from outside the city as long as they take good care of his property. Communities need all the economic activity they can get.
But she worries that these close-knit places, where generations of the same families have worked and fished for years, are turning into tourist destinations. She listed the stores that have closed, including ice houses, restaurants and convenience stores along Little Caillou Road. Chauvin’s library will be combined with two other community libraries 11 miles to the north.
Young people aren’t moving, Chauvin said. It’s “nearly impossible” to sell a home here, she says, unless out-of-towners are looking for a new camp. Shrimpers and anglers who have made a living off the bayou for generations are being forced out.
“They will be kicked out,” she said. “That’s the sad part. That’s what built Lower Louisiana.”
The Times-Picayune is investigating Louisiana’s insurance crisis. If you have a story you’d like to share, contact reporter Sam Karlin at skarlin@theadvocate.com.