EBR disputes Census estimate of population dip

• By JEREMY HARPER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 19, 2009 - Page: 1A

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The number of people living in East Baton Rouge Parish declined for the second consecutive year, but the parish population remains well above pre-Katrina levels, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Wednesday.

East Baton Rouge lost 1,554 people from July 2007 to July 2008, about a 0.4 percent drop, the annual Census estimates show. The drop was the parish’s largest single-year population decline this decade.

City-parish officials, as they did last year, disputed the estimate and said they plan to file a formal appeal with the Census Bureau.

“We absolutely disagree with the notion that we have somehow lost population over the last year,” said Mike Futrell, Mayor Kip Holden’s chief administrative officer. “We look at the number of residential building permits, we look at traffic counts, and it tells us the exact opposite.”

The nine-parish Baton Rouge metropolitan area grew by nearly 5,000 people over the same period thanks to the continuing population growth in Livingston and Ascension parishes, the Census data show.

The Baton Rouge area — which covers East Baton Rouge, Ascension, Livingston, East Feliciana, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, St. Helena, West Baton Rouge and West Feliciana parishes — held steady as the nation’s 67th largest metro area.

“The Baton Rouge metro area is kind of maturing in the sense that the suburban areas are growing really fast and the core areas are actually declining,” said LSU sociology professor Troy Blanchard, who released an analysis of the Census data with state demographer Karen Paterson.

Both Livingston and Ascension parishes made the Census Bureau’s list of the top 100 fastest-growing counties in the nation between 2000 and 2008, the only two parishes in Louisiana to make the list.

From 2007 to 2008, Ascension took in 2,700 people to reach a population of 101,789, and Livingston gained an extra 3,787 people for a total of 120,256 residents, according to the Census estimates.

The net migration into both suburban parishes was greater than the loss of people in East Baton Rouge, which Blanchard said means some of the new residents must be coming from elsewhere in Louisiana or from other states.

The bureau’s latest estimate pegs East Baton Rouge Parish’s population at 428,360, an increase of more than 16,000 over the last official estimate before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. The Baton Rouge-area population spiked after the storm.

Blanchard said demographers will pay close attention to East Baton Rouge in coming years to see if the decline continues. Currently, he said, it’s unclear whether the parish is reverting to its pre-storm trend of relatively small population fluctuations, or if the latest declines are related to the resettling of Katrina victims or driven by a larger flight to the suburbs.

“That would be the big question mark: what happens next in East Baton Rouge Parish?” Blanchard said.