Published in How We Respond: New Orleans Residents Respond to Flooding w/ Citizen Science

New Orleans is no stranger to flooding and extreme rain events. Add to that aging, overworked infrastructure and the neighborhood altering effects climate change can have on a low-lying region and you have an increasingly soggy community. Stantec’s Blue & Green Corridor Stormwater Resilience Project aims help the people of Gentilly to “live with water.” This new water management strategy is integrating water as part of an overall community-focused solution. It aims to refocus the public’s perception of water as a hazard to that of a resource. “Living with Water” means reimagining the idea of concrete infrastructure through a different lens with a strategy to simultaneously safeguard the area from flooding by introducing natural methods of water control, all the while beautifying the neighborhood and serving as a spark for redevelopment. 

This article profiles how the organization—ISeeChange—is working with the residents of Gentilly to record and map water hotspots. This community sourced information is being used by Stantec to validate modeling results, and build the right amount of green infrastructure into the Blue & Green plan. It is this consultant-community partnership that is at the heart of our mission—Design with the Community in Mind.