Mighty Mississippi River . . .

My home town is New Roads, Louisiana.  My family settled in Louisiana in 1856 when my great grandfather, a steam boat Captain, bought Brunswick Plantation located on the coast of Pointe Coupee.  The mighty river flows west to east from Morganza, Louisiana towards St. Francisville on the other side of the river and then turns abruptly left and south towards Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  Our plantation is sort of in the middle between Morganza and St. Francisville.  It is prime sugar cane land.

The river is at flood stage now and is flowing about 1.5 million cubic feet of water per second.  Let's put that in gallons which is much more interesting.  That would be 11.7 gallons of water per second.  Just about Morganza is Old River, a cut off horse shoe shape water structure that rises and falls with the river stages.  There is where the Old River Control Structure is built, a system of locks and flood gates that controls the flow of water out of the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya River.  About 30% of the water flowing down the Mississippi is diverted to the Atchafalaya River.

The Atchafalaya is were the Red River flowing out Texas and Oklahoma ends.  So the water of the Red River is mixed in with water from the Mississippi River.  The interesting point to be made is from that structure to the Gulf of Mexico for the Mississippi River it is about 250 or miles of the meandering Mississippi River but the Atchafalaya is fairly straight and it is only about a 100 miles to the Gulf of Mexico.  That means the Atchafalaya flows more than twice as fast as the Mississippi.  It is a mean river and it is trying to capture the Mississippi and leave Baton Rouge south high and dry.  The Army Corps of Engineers has designed the Old River Control Structure to prevent the capture of Mississippi River by the Atchafalaya River.

Below the Old River Control Structure lies the Morganza Spillway, an emergency flood control structure designed to off load excessive water from the Mississippi River.  The fore bay in front of the Morganza Spillway structure is about two miles from the main channel of the Mississippi and is about two miles wide.  There are guide levees that hold the water up against those control gates in the Morganza Structure.

The Morganza Spill way has been opened twice, once in 1973 and again 2011.  It was open about 50 some odd days before it was closed.  Fortunately in 2011 south Louisiana was in a drought and spillway that extends down and parallel to the Atchafalaya River absorbed all the water.  Today there is no drought and in fact the country side has received lots of rain and the land is saturated.  If they open the Morganza Spillway again, this time Morgan City, a town of 11,000, located on the Atchafalaya will get the brunt of the water flow.

But I am worried about upper Pointe Coupee Parish.  It is isolated with the Atchafalaya on the West, Old River on the North and the Morganza guide levees on the east.  It is triangle and there is no way out for the water if there is a crevasse.  In normal conditions water flows south and there is a pumping station lift the water out and over the levee into the Atchafalaya River.

But if there is a crevasse they will all be under water for along time.  In 1927 that is the region where the flood began.  Yes, all up and down the Mississippi flooded but there was a crevasse along the Atchafalaya and flood water reached all the way down to Pierre Part back behind the city of Plaquemine I Iberville Parish.  Even False River fill up from flood waters.  It was very bad.

So we wait and we watch and pray that there are no crevasses in the levees along the rivers.