Atchafalaya Coastal Resilience Lab

Duration:
ongoing

In partnership with St. Mary Parish and St. Mary Excel, the Water Institute is leading the development of a stakeholder-informed strategic plan for a coastal resilience lab focused on Atchafalaya River basin communities. In 2018, residents and decisionmakers in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana commissioned the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to identify strategies to enhance job creation and reduce population loss throughout the Parish. The ULI determined that the creation of a coastal resilience laboratory should be a key long-term goal of the region.

The Approach

Given St. Mary Parish’s rich history of technological innovation and its topographical characteristics, as well as the recent designation of a National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) in the Atchafalaya River Basin, the Parish is an ideal location for collaborative research and resilience-focused pilot projects that could be hosted through a coastal resilience lab. The Water Institute is working directly with residents and local stakeholders to determine how the coastal resilience lab can best serve the communities of the lower Atchafalaya Basin. 

This year-long planning effort to develop a strategic plan for the coastal resilience lab began in August 2024, and is using a structured decision making framework to ensure that the priorities for the lab are defined by stakeholders from various sectors working in and representing the Atchafalaya Basin at both the local and state level.

In October 2024, the planning team facilitated the first of three workshops, which involved iterating on the coastal resilience lab’s draft fundamental objectives that were developed by the decision-makers (St. Mary Parish and St. Mary Excel). Stakeholders had an opportunity to review and prioritize the draft fundamental objectives and provide feedback on the need for revisions or additional objectives. Stakeholders also began brainstorming the types of discrete actions that would be necessary to achieve these objectives. Following the first workshop, the planning team aggregated the input that stakeholders provided and finalized the fundamental objectives, which provide a foundation for the strategic planning process, and will directly inform the coastal resilience lab’s future operation, and prioritized research and pilot projects.

Fundamental objectives identified by the decision makers and stakeholders for a future coastal resilience lab in the lower Atchafalaya Basin.