Morganza Spillway May Open For First Time Since 73 - Would Route MS Floodwaters Through Atchafalaya

[hatrack]

The Army Corps of Engineers may open the Morganza Spillway near Baton Rouge next week to divert massive amounts of Mississippi River water into the Atchafalaya Delta. It would mark the first time since 1973 that the diversion structure has been used to prevent flooding.

The tactic is the latest being debated as the state prepares for the river to reach record levels, after the repeated thunderstorms across parts of the Mississippi and Ohio river basins during the past three weeks. The water those storms generated joined an already swollen river that crested in late March and early April after a major spring snow melt.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, who flew over the spillway area with corps officials Wednesday, told reporters he has activated the Louisiana National Guard to assist with flood prevention. The corps has already announced that it expects to open the Bonnet Carre Spillway in St. Charles Parish early next week to move river water into Lake Pontchartrain.

EDIT

A corps prediction on Wednesday called for a crest of 65.5 feet at Red River Landing, which would be 17.5 feet above official flood stage and 4.2 feet above the 1997 record. At Baton Rouge, where officials have built a clay berm along one levee segment to increase its strength, the crest of 47.5 feet on May 23, would be less than a foot below the record crest seen during the 1927 flood. The two spillways are expected to keep the river level in New Orleans at 17 feet when it crests on May 24, four feet below the record 21-foot crest in 1927. On Wednesday afternoon, the river had risen to 14.7 feet at the Carrollton Gauge.

EDIT

http://www.nola.com/weather/index.ssf/2011/05/morganza_spillway_may_be_opene.html

[phantom power]

1. "The Atchafalaya was coming home."

--David Brin

[hobbit709]

2. If the river had its way it would have done that a long time ago.

The only reason for the structure is to keep New Orleans from becoming a city without a port.

[Sal Minella]

3. John McPhee wrote a long article on the Atchafalaya in

The New Yorker many many years ago -- it left one with the certainty that those artificially low lowlands would be taken by the river again.