Bayous Flood As La. Residents Scramble

Source: NPR

by Greg Allen

Whitewater cascaded through the gate of the Morganza Floodway in Louisiana Sunday, part of an emergency effort to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans from the rising Mississippi River. The Army Corps of Engineers opened the first gate in the spillway on Saturday, diverting waters that will flood communities along the bayous that thousands call home.

It's a historic moment; the Morganza Floodway has only been opened once before, in 1973.

Army Corps of Engineers Col. Ed Fleming says it's the first time the Corps has ever operated three floodways at once on the Mississippi. In Missouri, the Corps blew holes in levees earlier this month to open the Birds Point Floodway. That lowered the river and protected Cairo, Ill., from flooding. The Corps has also opened the Bonnet Carre spillway of New Orleans and now the Morganza Floodway. Fleming says the Morganza is being opened to keep stress off the Mississippi levees that protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

"We'll take approximately 10,000 cubic feet per second off the top of the Mississippi River," he says.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/15/136328585/louisiana-floods-homes-to-save-others?ps=cprs

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Audio version here: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=136328585&m=136328576

I cannot imagine what it would be like to have your home flooded or possibly washed away. But I also don't see any other options. Our biggest problem is that man has decided to try to tame the Mississippi River along the whole watershed. Levees and spillways have been built on most of the river, keeping it from the natural cycle of the river. This encouraged the building of homes in places where they never would have or should have been built. My heart goes out to the affected people. My mind has to agree that this was necessary.

that they have to look at the numbers of people who will be impacted. There are two large cities, Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which would be affected, most probably severely, with a large population. Or you have to flood less populated areas. This is not an easy decision, I am sure. I would not want to have to make it. But there really isn't any other decision to be made based on the fact that none of these areas should be populated. They are. The security has been artificially built along the river. This is not a situation where there will not be devastation somewhere.

I just don't know what the people who are against opening the Morganza Spillway would do if they had to make the decisions.

Because rivers flood - is that the argument?

Yes, rivers flood from time to time. These are predictable and controllable events. It is also true that global climate change models predict an increase in severe weather, and increased precipitation, over and above natural cycles. What we are seeing this spring will continue to happen, and will further increase, as long as we continue to do nothing about GCC.

That status quo will be maintained as long as the corporate oligarchy is allowed to exist - that much is plain to see. We don't even seem to be able to summon the political will to stop giving billions of tax dollars to corporations that are already sucking the economy dry to the tune of dozens of billions every quarter. You can bet that the oligarchs don't give a damn about the fishermen and nutria trappers in the Atchafalaya Basin, any more than they gave a damn about the residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, and you can also bet that they don't own real estate in the flood plain.

it is too late for that. New Orleans is built and has been for hundreds of years. Cities have all been built along rivers from the earliest days. The problem we have is that there is a huge flood coming that can be minimized somewhat by opening the Morganza Spillway, and it will affect a large number of people if we do not flood other areas with less population. This is a lousy position to be in, but here we are.

You state that floods are predictable and controllable----predictable, yes; controllable, only to an extent. So, we are controlling this flooding of Baton Rouge and New Orleans by flooding the Atchafalaya Basin. Not an ideal for control though. But don't think that there are not a lot of mega-agri-business farms in that basin. Not that the oligarchy cares---they will be paid handsomely by the government for their losses.

We had the means to prevent this decades ago, but instead of changing our behavior to arrest GCC, we sat on our hands and enjoyed our monstrous vehicles and addiction to fossil fuels. What we're seeing today as a result is unprecedented: THREE flood control mechanisms in use on the Mississippi at the same time. Remember that Bonnet Carre was opened several days ago. There can be no doubt that opening Morganza is the lesser of two evils, but it's a choice we wouldn't have to make if we had acted on the GCC evidence and science that we had before us in the 60s and 70s.

Only parts of New Orleans are below sea level, but that's actually irrelevant. The flood control devices they have in the city are more than adequate to handle naturally occurring precipitation. What they can't handle, at present, is flooding that results from human failure, like inadequate levees, or from man-made GCC.

would be to allow the Atchafalaya River to become the new main channel to the sea

You control it by preventing it from happening in the first place. GCC science has been telling us for decades that this kind of event would come to pass if we did nothing - and we have done nothing.

Perhaps I should have said "predictable = preventable"...

Because a short steep route for the Mississippi is not what the USA wants. Without the ORCS the river would change its course and drain far more rapidly when flood conditions occurred.

Second, GCC science has been saying nothing about this for "decades"; remember anthropogenic global warming has only been recognised as the mainstream explanation for observed global temperature increase in the past 15 years.

Third, Predictable =/= Preventable. I can confidently predict that the sun will expand and engulf the earth in about 5 - 6 billion years but there is nothing that can prevent it, similarly a magnitude 8+ earthquake will hit San Francisco within the next 100 years. Anthropogenic global warming was not predictable without a science birthed by the society that caused the effect; in large part, by the time it was recognised, the damage had already been done. What you should say is that Prediction --> Mitigation, but all too often that nice --> is turned by human greed into -/->.

for decades, the whole city was what we now know as the French Quarter, which is on high* ground about five feet above sea level. Expansion initially took place along the riverfront in both directions, giving rise to the name "Crescent City". The areas "back of town" that are below sea level remained undeveloped until the invention of the Wood screw pump in the early 20th century; it is still in use today.

makes this the right call, regardless of where homes or cities "should have been built".

"Should have been" does not exist. "is" and "are" however, do.

to rebuild below sea-level, or to build elsewhere.

When people build in floodplains and river deltas, sometimes they will get flooded out. Everybody knows this. Certainly everybody THERE knows.

It would be irresponsible to let the capitol and NOLA flood. Heck, if we had let nature take its course, they wouldn't even BE on the main part of the Big Muddy anymore.

Then again, they built on floodplains and river deltas, so certainly they'll get flooded out sometimes. Certainly everybody there knows.

Except that when it actually happens, there's a Greek chorus saying that it should be prevented, that, yes, they knew they were below sea level but still they shouldn't, mustn't, be flooded out. Responsibility is for others.

From time to time some people would be flooded out. But the flooding out is concentrated, by man's doing, in certain areas. Those areas flood much worse than they would otherwise. As a result of damming the Mississippi and releasing the water only in a few select places, the flooding there is much worse than it would have been and people who would be safe in those portions of the flood plain are flooded. Some people get dammed and therefore protected, knowing that others will be damned.

It's not a cut and dried issue. People understand, people struggle, people argue and try to coexist within a harsh environment and a harsher set of governmental confusions and betrayals. But they'll survive and go on.

www.nola.com

But it's important to remember that this situation, like the aftermath of Katrina, was preventable. This is not the result of natural weather cycles, but rather the predictable result of global climate change. Preventing it would have required foresight and meaningful action many years ago, but it was preventable.

We've never had floods before nor Cat 5 hurricanes. Katrina, at least for New Orleans, was entirely a man-made disaster because of faulty levees, not spooky envirobabble.

The major damage from Katrina was preventable - a man-made disaster, just like the wall of water that would have been coming at you down the Mississippi if not for the opening of Morganza. Two different causes, but both man-made.

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South and, for the most part, feel our animals are treated as well as many Northern states. Of course, my experience is limited to what I've read and from people that I know who live in Northern climes.

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