After nine months, the long-awaited Southwest Louisiana Regional Impact Study was released last week. The projections listed reinforce how important it is for local officials to get ready for the expected growth and make sure services can withstand it for the short and long term.

The study, led by the Go Group and funded by Sasol, indicated that employment could grow by 4.7 percent annually over five years. That would make Lake Charles “the fastest-growing employment center in the country,” according to Travis Woodard with CSRS, the Baton Rouge-based firm that helped complete the study.

Add to that more than 20,000 new people in the area, and the region will experience challenges unlike any it has encountered before. More than 60 percent of those expected to move into Calcasieu Parish will live in unincorporated areas. That brings another set of challenges because those areas may not be able to expand services, like water and sewer, as easily as cities could.

As these people move into the area, the demand for both temporary and permanent housing will rise. While the region already has two approved temporary employee villages, Woodard said it still needs more than 7,000 units to fill the demand at peak growth.

However, there needs to be careful planning when it comes to growth because there will come a time when those temporary workers leave the area. Woodard was correct in saying that we should not overbuild. The region does not need a bevy of vacant apartment complexes or properties if the growth plateaus.

Woodard said the region will need 8,000 permanent dwellings. That’s 10 percent of the 80,000 households already here.

It’s not just housing that will be impacted. The study predicts traffic delays to go up by 45 percent, while freight output could double by 2021. Local municipalities could reduce some of the traffic impact by improving existing transit systems.

There could be 6,000 additional K-12 students over the next five years, 5,000 of them attending Calcasieu Parish schools. That’s another problem because there is already overcrowding at schools in the Moss Bluff and south Lake Charles areas.

Woodard said the region would have to add about 75 new hospital beds to maintain the ratio of bed count to population.

While it’s good to hear that Southwest Louisiana is a hot spot for economic development activity, we can’t sit by and expect things to remain as they are. Local officials should continue the planning work they started months ago, because if this report pans out as expected, the region’s entire outlook and landscape will change.(MGNonline)