LA is now sacred. Protect at all costs.
The headline implies that this is an agricultural center, which is misleading. There are some farming operations in the basin, and a few small towns (which are protected by ring levees.) That anyone is being flooded is tragic. But it is mostly swampland.
Why are small towns and farmers being sacrificed for new Orleans?
Is it because N.O. is Ray Nagin’s “Chocolate City” full of Holder’s people where the festering crime-ridden sore of the Ninth Ward must be preserved?
Naawwww....couldn’t be that, I’m sure....</sarc>
That's less than 1/6th of a square mile. I would bet they mean over 100 square miles. It would be nice if these reporters would get their facts straight before publishing.
It took a while in the 1970's to complete Interstate 10 across this swamp.
Anyone who has ever driven the stretch from Lafayette to Baton Rouge knows they are going to be traveling about 30 miles on a continuous bridge over the swamp.
Now there is some natural gas and oil production in the basin.
And there is some farmland.
But it has been an area that is flooded when the Mississippi threatens to flood Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
The Atchafalaya River goes near Morgan City -- so this city is in danger of some flooding -- depending on how long and how much water is released.
Releasing sooner is better than later.
It is possible to stop some of the release and let the Atchafalaya Basin water start flowing to the Gulf, and then release some water.
What really needs to be done is set up some lakes along the Mississippi that water can be diverted into when there is a significant Spring thaw.
There are Western US Cities that would love the prospect of getting millions of acres of water.
The real cost of such an effort is the energy to pump the water -- in some cases to higher elevations to get them to Western Destinations.
Of course, when the Dimwit Democrats and Obama flushed a trillion dollars down the toilet on the stimulus, they realized this, and projected for the future.
Oh, I forget, they are a bunch DIMWITS
Thinking in not their pay grade.
No levees have failed. They are performing up to specs. They are holding back floodwaters.
The governments solution? Open them up and destroy massive areas of towns and farmlands, in the name of “safety.”
And you wonder how the same government can pass Obamacare in the name of providing medical care?
Easy - they only have one solution for anything that works.
Kill it.
This swamp is so large that it takes a 18+ mile stretch of Interstate 10 bridge just to cross part of it.
It can hold quite a bit of water, but homes in the swamp will be flooded...
God bless and protect everyone concerned. I’ll leave this one up to the people who know what they are doing and why.
Nothing more annoying than clicking on the video and the first ad is for the Kenyan.
Sorry white farmers. Time to move on with your cracker @rses.
I used to work for FEMA and saw the Bonne Carre spillway opened in 1983. I thought THAT was impressive, this has to be an incredible sight!
I used to work for FEMA and saw the Bonne Carre spillway opened in 1983. I thought THAT was impressive, this has to be an incredible sight!
The Morganza Spillway, a 3,900-foot (1,200 m) controlled spillway using a set of flood gates to control the volume of water entering the Morganza Floodway from the Mississippi River, consists of a concrete weir, two sluice gates, seventeen scour indicators, and 125 gated openings which can allow up to 600,000 cubic feet per second (17,000 m3/s) of water to be diverted from the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya Basin during major floods. The project was completed in 1954.600,000 cu. ft./second = approx 4.5 million gallons and is the maximum flow rate.
The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources Office of Conservation estimates that 2,264 wells lie in that area and would be inundated if the Corps of Engineers carries out its plans. Those wells produce the equivalent of 19,278 barrels of oil per day—about 10% of the state's onshore production, the state agency estimated.
There are some 140 operators in the basin, including BP PLC, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil Corp., Apache Corp., Devon Energy Corp., according to state data.
There is no "RIGHT" answer here, just one that is "less wrong" than all the others...
Water flows "downhill" and its got to go somewhere, luckily we have a system that allows us to divert it where it will do less economical damage.