"Nine Gates Open. . . "

Nine gates of the 125 gates of the Morganza Spillway are open. All are fleeing in front of the wall of water: wild life and people. The Atchafalaya Swamp is getting restocked with fish from the Mississippi River.

So far things are working as expected. No one knows what will happen in the forebay of the Morganza Spillway structure. Could a new channel be developing? Or what is occurring the down stream flow out of the gates, will the rip rap hold the soil in place?

People are worried that it can not be closed. But remember it is built at ground level which is way above the channel of the Mississippi. So when the river recedes, the water will not continue to pass through the gates. The gates will be high and dry.

It is said that only 25% of the gates will be opened. The max capacity of the Morganza Structure is 600 thousand cubic feet per second, so that is a rate of about 150 thousand cubic feet per second. That will keep the river from rising any further at Baton Rouge and all places south including New Orleans.

Now that the spillway is opened we must wait and see what happens. If there is a disaster to the south, then I am sure they will open it up all the way to take the pressure off a crevasse. I worry about Upper Pointe Coupee, it is below the Old River Control Structure, and above the Morganza Spillway, so it is at the mercy of the river. A crevasse there would fill Upper Pointe Coupee to the top in about two days and the water would stay there.

Stay there you say, yes. There is no outlet, the water would be trapped by the surrounding levees. Water on both sides and no where to go. In normal times the natural drainage to south end of the area is pumped out into the Atchafalaya River. Those pumps would be submerged and useless. So Upper Pointe Coupee is isolated and must stand by itself.

So what you say, well in the history of crevasses from about 1880 to present day there have been 10 in that region. Even in the 1927 flood, the levee crevassed at McCrea which is a community of sorts in Upper Pointe Coupee along the Atchafalaya River. There was a later crevasse on the other side of the river at almost the same location. All the flooding of that era went down the Atchafalaya basin to the Gulf of Mexico. All the Mississippi River towns like Baton Rouge, White Castle, Plaquemine, Donaldsonville, New Orleans, etc. were saved by those crevasses. The levee did not crevasse on the Mississippi, it did it on the Atchafalaya.

The Morganza Spillway is a man made crevasse that can be controlled. And the excess water is going to the same places as in 1927. Yes, the wider area has levees not to keep it contained in the Atchafalaya valley. The exception is that the Morganza Spillway will not flood Upper Pointe Coupee, the flooding occurs further down river on the same old Atchafalaya.

We will start to see the effects of the spillway in a day or two. We can expect to see the Atchafalaya up stream flow to slow down and rise to cause flooding along that stretch of the river. Already Melville and Krotz Springs are under alert and folks are withdrawing into the ring levees. I suppose Simmsport will be doing the same.

Towns with no protection like Butte LaRose and Stephenville will get flooded. Parts of Morgan City will get flooded, those parts outside the ring levee in particular. Butte LaRose is like on a hump of land down in the swamp. It is not high enough and will get flooded. Not nice but a fact of life.

Pray for those people, they need all the help they can get.