Windell Curole Knows the Coast

We rolled back into Thibodaux the other day to interview Windell Curole, the now-retired longtime general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District—and a literal lifesaver for coastal Louisiana.

Windell grew up fishing and trapping along Bayou Lafourche, learning its rhythms before levees even existed. In 1980 he took the helm of the Levee District; for the next 42 years, he led the charge to build nearly 48 miles of hurricane protection levees—from Larose to Golden Meadow—funded not by Washington but by his own people via local sales taxes.

In the years after Katrina, federal regulators tried to force his system down to 13 feet tall. Windell refused. He built up to 18 feet, even as the U.S. Army Corps decertified the system and pulled funding.

Then came Hurricane Ida in 2021. Surge hit 17 feet, and while surrounding parishes flooded, no lives were lost and no buildings were flooded behind Windell’s levees.

We talked about the physics of sediment loss, the poetry of pump stations, and the politics of survival in a sinking landscape. We heard stories about scuba-diving under jammed pumps in the dark and how elevation can mean community-resilience. Windell’s work isn’t just civil engineering—it’s local outrage, Cajun pragmatism, and a prayer in dirt against disappearing land.

Second photo courtesy Internazionale