A very interesting article at the source.
A very interesting article at the source.
It seems that river wants to meander. When man tries to change what God has created and then builds cities relying on “man’s power” to control things, man will lose every time. If God wants the Atchafalaya channel to take in the Mississippi and destroy Morgan City, so it will be. We can only watch in wonder at his power and praise him for his creation.
McPhee should be required reading for anyone living in the Mississippi/Missouri/Ohio River Basins. Add to that John Barry’s book, Rising Tide that tells the story of the 1927 flood. You must understand the river if you intend to live within its reach, and these two writers provide an insight that everyone can understand.
Among the lessons that come clearly to light are that man can do much to control this mighty river, but in the end, the river will prevail. The Atchafalaya will capture the Mississippi, of that we can be certain. Without the extraordinary engineering efforts that have been undertaken in the past 130 years, it would have happened already. But, someday, the river will win and the Old River Control System and the Morganza Floodway will be undermined during some massive flood event and the river will carve a new channel to the Atchafalaya basin and it will be game over. I don’t think that it will happen this year, at least based on reports of the last few days. The system has worked as designed and we don’t have any apparent undermined/scouring that might destroy the flood control structures. We have dodged a bullet. But, the river is patient and she will win some day.
I still remember the first time I drove on Hwy. 90 from Florida to Texas in 1970. For maybe 25 miles there was nothing but swamp and rivers. One bridge after another until I finally came to the Huey Long Bridge.
The Atchafalaya must be the biggest swamp in the world.
When I was a kid in high school, they taught us that periodic flooding like this is what replenishes farmland with valuable solids from the river sediment. Periodic flooding is not necessarily a bad thing, and it sounds like many of the residents already know that, and many had long-standing plans on how to evacuate now, and pick up the pieces later.
I saw one guy on the news last night who stripped his home of everything, including the kitchen cabinets, the hot water tank and the air conditioning condenser unit. He’s prepared to make whatever repairs to the sheetrock he has to, and then reinstall everything again.
Water always wins.
Why don’t we put a dam on the Mississippi?