Tactical retreat? As seas rise, Louisiana faces hard choices.

TERREBONNE AND PLAQUEMINES PARISHES, LA.—Growing up in the small bayou town of Pointe-aux-Chenes, Reggie Dupre has always considered the residents of the neighboring Isle de Jean Charles community as something like a step-family. With only about 10 miles of bayou separating them in Terrebonne Parish, he would go to the same churches and schools as them. They even shared a voting precinct.

“The island is an extension of the Pointe-aux-Chenes community,” he says.

This is what made cutting Isle de Jean Charles out from the parish’s new expansive levee protection system – which Mr. Dupre is helping construct as head of the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District – all the more painful for him.

“It’s always been for me a bit of personal dilemma that I’m the chief executive of the agency responsible for building a system that excludes the island,” he adds…

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