Jefferson Parish is forty miles long, and how a hurricane treats you depends entirely on which end you live on. Grand Isle, the barrier island at the southern tip, takes the first hit — every time. Bucktown, on the lakefront, floods when Pontchartrain surges. The interior suburbs around Metairie sit behind levees that weren't completed until after they'd already failed. Hurricane Betsy in 1965 was the turning point. It killed 76 people and became the first billion-dollar hurricane in American history. Congress responded by authorizing the Lake Pontchartrain & Vicinity Hurricane Protection Project and giving the Army Corps of Engineers sole authority over New Orleans-area flood control. The project was supposed to be finished by 2015. When Katrina hit in 2005, Jefferson Parish's portion was only 70 percent complete. The system held better here than in Orleans Parish, but the southern communities — Jean Lafitte, Crown Point, Barataria — flooded badly. Ida arrived in 2021 with 150-mph winds and pushed ten to twelve feet of water through the lower parish. The upgraded levee system held in the north. The south, as always, took the blow. The people who live at the bottom of Jefferson Parish know the math. They stay anyway.
