25,000 Expected To Flood When Morganza Opens
Will they open the Morganza Floodway to relieve pressure on the levees in New Orleans and Baton Rouge? All the Corps of Engineers is waiting for is the flow rates to hit the required level, and then they will pull the trigger to send water cascading into areas from Northwest of Baton Rouge down to Terrebonne and Lafourche.
An estimated 25,000 people will be impacted by the intentional flooding.
“The Corps also presented us today with information on population statistics and structures that could be impacted by the opening of the Spillway,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said. “Their information shows that there are about 2,500 people located inside the Spillway and 2,000 structures. In the backwater area, there are about 22,500 people and 11,000 structures that would be impacted by the Morganza Spillway opening.”
Col. Ed Fleming with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers notes the river has not been this swollen in more than 80 years.
“The flows and the stages you see are in exceedance of the flood of 1927,” Fleming said.
Jindal said, “We know the Corps will make the decision to open the Morganza Spillway when the trigger point of 1.5 million cubic feet per second at the Red River Landing gauge is reached. The Corps said they expect this trigger to be reached around by Saturday.”
He adds that roughly three million acres will be impacted by flooding with the opening of Morganza.
If what the corps said about epic flow is true, then why wss Morganza opened in 1973? That’s not 80 years ago. They’re going to flood the spillway area and do no good at all for Baton Rouge and New Orleans – they’ll flood anyway, resulting in 25,000 people that didn’t need to get wet..
My understanding is that Morganza was opened in 1973 because there was damage to the Old River Control Structure and they needed to repair it — it wasn’t because the flow hit the threshold.
This is a great explanation of the Old River Control Structure and the Atchafalaya and Mississippi Rivers: http://www.americaswetlandresources.com/background_facts/detailedstory/LouisianaRiverControl.html
Just like in 1927 when the rich dogs decided to blow the levees to save that cesspool known as New Orleans. Lots of poor people lost their homes for good and could never return. My bet is that the farmers in these flooded areas will scream for and receive compensation for their losses. The people who have homes in these areas will be considered ignorant for living in these flood planes and will get zero compensation.
Well, if you live in a spillway you are assuming the risk that at some point
it will have to be opened. That’s one reason why land in a spillway is
cheaper than land outside of it.
It stinks, but it is the way it is. It works under the same principle
whereby bad neighborhoods are cheaper to live in than good ones are.
Just like in 1927 when the rich dogs decided to blow the levees to save that cesspool known as New Orleans. Lots of poor people lost their homes for good and could never return. My bet is that the farmers in these flooded areas will scream for and receive compensation for their losses. The people who have homes in these areas will be considered ignorant for living in these flood planes and will get zero compensation.
The people facing the flooding do NOT live in the spillway. We live in an area that will be flooded because of back water rising due to the height and speed of the water flowing down the Atchafalaya River. The people here aren’t crying. We understand that Nature occasionally likes to remind us that we just live here for a while. We’re busy sandbagging and doing the other things we need to to protect our property as much as possible. Then we will calmly sit and wait.
That’s all you can do, and you’ve got our prayers.