This editorial-style illustration emphasizes the absence of environmental issues in the 2025 New Orleans elections. At the center, a clipboard lists the campaign focus areas—economic development, government services, public safety, and affordable housing—under the hashtag #livingwithwater. Surrounding the clipboard are silhouettes of political candidates framed by Democratic and Republican symbols. Below, the illustration highlights the city’s existential threats: flooding, saltwater intrusion, sinking levees, and overwhelmed floodwalls, reminding viewers that water and environment remain critical yet often overlooked priorities.
This political illustration highlights overlooked environmental issues in the 2025 New Orleans elections, depicting campaign themes such as economic development, government services, public safety, and housing while underscoring the city’s urgent challenges of rising water, saltwater intrusion, and sinking levees. (Illustration | The Lens)

With New Orleans’s fall elections just weeks away, I have been combing through the published platforms of the people running to serve as New Orleans’s next mayor, councilmember, and assessor. Across the board, most candidates have something to say about economic development, government services, public safety, and affordable housing. Yet, we see scarce mention of an issue – water and environment – that directly affects every New Orleanian and shapes each of these other issues. 

This oversight is particularly striking given the ongoing twentieth commemoration of Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures of 2005. How can we be mourning the losses and traumas of Katrina and celebrating the resilience and spirit of the city, while simultaneously ignoring our duty to address the city’s many risks and vulnerabilities, many of which have worsened in recent years due to climate change and sea level rise?

People collaborate in a planning workshop, with one group reviewing a laptop and another analyzing a large map on a screen, surrounded by notes, charts, and brainstorming materials on the walls.
New Orleans residents review maps and brainstorm solutions during a community planning session focused on infrastructure, water management, and neighborhood resilience. ( Photo by Maggie Hermann)

Take the saltwater wedge of 2023, for example. Every upcoming mayor is more likely to face such a crisis again, as rising seas and more frequent droughts across the Mississippi River watershed increase the probability of saltwater threatening our drinking water intakes. At the same time, our aging drainage and pumping system is facing more intense rain events because of changing weather patterns. And that very pumping causes continued sinking in large swaths of the city – including the rebuilt levees and floodwalls that are meant to keep out the next big storm surge.  This stuff is existential.

Credit where credit is due – Royce Duplessis’s platform does include a section on resilience where he talks about fortified roofs, green infrastructure, job training, and strengthening homes in low-income neighborhoods. But all the other candidates? What is your environmental agenda, and what capacities and experiences will you bring to bear upon our environmental challenges? 

Helena Moreno and Oliver Thomas, how might the mayor and City Council work together to develop a transformative environmental agenda that ensures the city is thriving in 2050? Or to support the SWBNO in accessing resources to make critical repairs to our water systems? What will become of the mayor’s Office of Resilience and Sustainability, or the city’s Hazard Mitigation program?

Eugene Green and Leilani Heno, how will you see the $141 million Gentilly Resilience District through to completion, and what is your vision for further reducing risk for the residents of your district and other low-lying areas in the city? Jason Hughes and Cyndi Nguyen, how can city government learn from and scale up myriad community-led efforts (ranging from rain gardens and wetland parks to environmental education programs and Lincoln Beach) in the years ahead?

Freddie King, Kelsey Foster, Erroll Williams, and Casius Pealer, in what ways can City Council and the Assessor’s Office address the growing challenge of insuring homes and businesses, particularly for those who are below sea level, or unable to afford insurance? And how might we address other impacts of climate change on the city’s economy?

Matthew Willard and Gregory Manning, how can city government work with state government to ensure that the city’s interests are represented in coastal restoration efforts? And how should the city be responding to the federal government’s defunding of weather monitoring, climate science, and environmental justice initiatives?

Ultimately, I think the question that we should be asking each candidate is: what does a sustainable, resilient New Orleans look like to you, and what will you do as an elected official to get us there? Whether they end up at City Hall or lead efforts elsewhere, we need each of these candidates to be an expert on water and environment.

We simply cannot afford a continued absence of leadership on these topics. With every hurricane and thunderstorm, with every river flood stage and opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway, and with every millimeter that the city and our levees sink, we are reminded that water formed the mud upon which New Orleans is tenuously perched, and that the flow of water will always determine what is possible here at the edge of the Gulf.  

I’ve only addressed a handful of the candidates, as I do not know them all. I’m sure, however, that YOU know at least one person running for office. Will you join me in demanding that they add water and environment to their platform? 

We can apply pressure at meet and greets and candidate forums. We can make the ask at campaign headquarters and via candidate websites. 

And since it is 2025, we can use social media to start a community-wide conversation. Let’s tag the candidates we know, and let’s all use the #livingwithwater hashtag so that we can see each candidate’s responses and commitments. Let’s use that hashtag, too, to share our own ideas for what leadership on water and environment should look like. 

How can we be sure that our future leaders are preparing to lead a transformation in our relationship to water, environment, and infrastructure? There is only one way to find out. We must ask them.

Aron Chang is an urban designer and educator who focuses on community-based planning and design practices. Since working on the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan from 2011 to 2013, he has collaborated with educators, engineers, planners, policy makers, artists, activists, and community leaders to tackle the question of “living with water” in southeast Louisiana and other coastal communities. He is a worker owner at Civic Studio and co-leads the Water Leaders Institute as well as the Water Map New Orleans  / Water Map Bulbancha initiative. He is a co-founder of the Ripple Effect Water Literacy Project and a founding member of the Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans. From 2017 to 2018, he served on the New Orleans City Council’s Environmental Advisory Committee.