The other ledger for Louisiana: 26 rural hospitals at risk of closure, a 105,863-home shortage for the state's poorest renters, half its major roads poor or mediocre and 11% of its bridges rated poor, and a $9 billion drinking-water backlog in systems mostly built before 1960. Against that, the nation's model broadband programme — first to final BEAD approval — reported exactly as measured. Every figure is sourced, dated, and labeled — counted, modeled, or assessed.
How to read this page: the class chip on every measure is the honesty label. Counted = an inspection or enumeration record. Modeled = a study's projection or risk score — printed with the modeler's name. Assessed = a structured survey of required investment — needs as documented, not measurements of decay. Figures keep the form their source gave them; years are printed on every measure.
Click any category to expand it — every measure with its figure, what it means in plain language, and its source.
Hospitals — two screens, not one number. The 26-at-risk count (11 immediate) comes from a 2026 analysis of Louisiana hospital finances against the coming federal Medicaid caps (KFF, via news reporting); Chartis's separate vulnerability model places Louisiana only within a 26–30% band. Both are printed with their methods. In October 2026 the state health department directed the sale of four struggling rural hospitals in Acadiana — reported as context in the category, not counted as closures.
Food. The figures are food-insecurity measures — a 2026 Senate-resolution estimate of about 825,000 people and Feeding America's parish-level modelling (19.1% in Central Louisiana). No current Louisiana-wide USDA Atlas low-income/low-access resident count was published in the sources retrieved, so no food-desert resident count is printed; the category note says so.
Water. The $9B drinking-water backlog and the one-third-of-parishes saltwater-intrusion risk are ASCE Louisiana's 2025 report card figures (drinking water graded D). ASCE's older national fact sheet put the drinking-water gap at $7.3B — disclosed on the record, not blended. No single statewide wastewater dollar total was published in the sources retrieved, so none is printed.
Dams — read the 4% carefully. ASCE Louisiana reports 4% of the state's 693 dams rated satisfactory. That figure is printed as published and is never inverted on this page into a claim that 96% are failing: fair, poor and unrated are different conditions, and the source does not support the arithmetic.
Power — a forecast and an approval, not a shortage. Entergy Louisiana's peak-demand outlook (+57% by 2040) is the utility's own IRP forecast, printed with the intervenors' objection that part of the load is speculative. The 2,300 MW of approved gas generation serves a private data centre; it is need context, and the plants themselves are private construction, excluded from the Built page by rule.
Broadband vintages. Louisiana's remaining-location counts differ by document — about 124,000 deployment locations (ConnectLA) and 127,108 eligible locations in programme materials. The page uses the deployment figure and names the other in the notes.
Traffic. TRIP's hours and dollars are Baton Rouge metro figures; no honest statewide congestion-hours total is published for Louisiana, and none is printed. The statewide congestion cost ($4.1B a year) from the same report is on the Baton Rouge record.