Bayous Flood As La. Residents Scramble 15MAI11 & Haley Barbour To Flood-Stricken Mississippians: You’re On Your Own 11MAI11

A flood of epic proportions, I hope this is a wake up call to the people of the area and they consider just what would be happening now if it wasn't for the federal government. The repiglicans and tea-baggers would have cut the funding for the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, there wouldn't be the hundreds of people on duty necessary to maintain the flood control system and do their best to manage the river and the aftermath of the flood. Think this is all bunk? Consider the lack of government response in Pakistan during and after the massive Indus River floods of 2010, that is how the repiglicans and tea-baggers would handle the Mississippi River floods of 2011. Need proof, see the words of tea-bagger gop governor haley barbour to the citizens of Mississippi on 11MAI11.

by Greg Allen

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Enlarge Patrick Semansky/AP A member of the Louisiana National Guard stands guard as water diverted through the Morganza Spillway begins to fill a pasture in Morganza, La., on Saturday.

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.
That's just a fraction of what the Morganza can handle. Even when the river crests in this area late next week, the Corps expects to open just a quarter of the floodgates. Fleming says the Corps will open the gates slowly — just one or two at a time — for a few reasons. One is to protect the spillway.
"The water will come out of here pretty quickly," he says. "You don't want to scour the backside of this structure. From an environmental perspective, obviously there are lots of bear and other kinds of wildlife. And we want to make sure they have the opportunity to get to higher ground. And last but most importantly, we want to make sure folks have the understanding that water's coming their way and they need to evacuate."
About 60 miles south of the Morganza spillway, the people of Butte La Rose have gotten the message. At the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, Teddy and Michelle Wyatt, along with their friend Clo Comeaux, were stacking pews from the church on a trailer.
"We just volunteered to take everything out, to salvage what we could," they say. "The pews, the altar, the cross, you know, everything that was moveable."
Down by the levee, a group of prisoners from the St. Martin Parish jail are working to fill sandbags to protect private and public buildings. They're being supervised by Clayton Landry, with the sheriff's department. He says it's been a busy week in Butte La Rose.
"People are trying to move out, move their gear out of their homes and camps and save as much as they can," he says. "The sheriff hasn't announced a mandatory evacuation yet, but as soon as the water rises, they will announce it."
That could come in the next few days. The Corps says it will take about three days for water in the floodway to reach the southern end, near Morgan City. Then it will begin to back up throughout the Atchafalaya Basin, backflooding bayou communities that are home to as many as 25,000 people. In these communities, people aren't happy about having to fight the water, but few question the corps' decision to open the floodway.
As for Corps officials, they're cautiously optimistic that with the Morganza, plus all the other levees and floodways in their toolbox, they'll be able to handle the 2011 flood and avert a catastrophe.
But Corps Gen. Michael Walsh says it's important that hundreds of workers with the Corps and other agencies keep patrolling the levees to watch for warning signs. History, he says, shows the price of failure.
"There was an 80-mile width of water covering five states from the '27 flood. So any type of failure or any type of concern from that regard in regards to underseeping and overtopping — we're gonna be on rapidly," he says.
The Corps expects to keep the Morganza Floodway open until the Mississippi crests in Louisiana and falls below a level that's a threat to levees in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Unfortunately for people in the Atchafalaya Basin, that may be another three weeks.

Related NPR Stories

Miss. River Spillway Opens, Towns Await The Flood May 15, 2011

Haley Barbour To Flood-Stricken Mississippians: You’re On Your Own

In the past week, the Mississippi Delta has been hit hard by flooding in the Mississippi River. The rising water wiped out crops, forced families out of their homes, and caused river-front casinos to shut down, costing the government up to $13 million a month. The Associated Press reported that the damage in Memphis was estimated at $320 million, but that “the worst is yet to come, with the crest expected over the next few days.”
Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) –- instead of pledging to do everything possible to help the people of his state deal with the flood -– called for the federal government to declare a flooding disaster, moved his furniture out of his lake house, and told flood-stricken families to rely on their friends to get to higher ground because the state wouldn’t help:

As the water rose, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour moved furniture out of his lake house outside Vicksburg on family land that was inundated during the 1927 flood. A week ago, he urged residents to flee low-lying areas, saying that the state wouldn’t assist the evacuations and that people should help one another secure their property and get out.

With Barbour’s staunch opposition to efforts to reduce climate pollution — which is driving the extreme flooding — it’s probably a good thing for America that he took his hat out of the ring for the presidency late last month.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/11/haley-barbour-on-your-own/
 

La. floodgate opens for 1st time in 38 years, easing strain in Mississippi River levees 14MAI11

THE Army Corps of Engineers opens the Morganza spillway for the first time in 38 years in an attempt to prevent flooding in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.......

MORGANZA, La. — A steel, 10-ton floodgate was slowly raised Saturday for the first time in nearly four decades, unleashing a torrent of water from the Mississippi River, away from heavily populated areas downstream.
The water spit out slowly at first, then began gushing like a waterfall as it headed to swamp as much as 3,000 square miles of Cajun countryside known for small farms and fish camps. Some places could wind up under as much as 25 feet of water.
Opening the Morganza spillway diverts water away from Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.
“We’re using every flood control tool we have in the system,” Army Corps of Engineers Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh said Saturday from the dry side of the spillway, before the bay was opened. The podium Walsh was standing at was expected to be under several feet of water Sunday.
The Morganza spillway is part of a system of locks and levees built following the great flood of 1927. When it opened, it was the first time three flood-control systems have been unlocked at the same time along the Mississippi River.
Earlier this month, the corps intentionally blew holes into a levee in Missouri to employ a similar cities-first strategy, and it also opened the Bonnet Carre spillway northwest of New Orleans to send water into the massive Lake Ponchatrain.
Snowmelt and heavy rain have been blamed for inflating the Mississippi, and the rising river levels have shattered records all set 70 years ago.
About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm’s way.
In Krotz Springs, La., one of the towns in the Atchafalaya River basin bracing for floodwaters, Monita Reed, 56, recalled the last time the Morganza was opened in 1973.
“We could sit in our yard and hear the water,” she said as workers constructed a makeshift levee of sandbags and soil-filled mesh boxes in hopes of protecting the 240 homes in her subdivision.
Some people living in the threatened stretch of countryside — an area known for a drawling French dialect — have already started heading out. Reed’s family packed her furniture, clothing and pictures in a rental truck and a relative’s trailer.
“I’m just going to move and store my stuff. I’m going to stay here until they tell us to leave,” Reed said. “Hopefully, we won’t see much water and then I can move back in. “
It took about 15 minutes for the one 28-foot gate to be raised. Several hours will pass before any of the water hits sparsely populated communities. The corps planned to open one or two more gates Sunday in a painstaking process that gives residents and animals a chance to get out of the way.
The water will flow 20 miles south into the Atchafalaya Basin. From there it will roll on to Morgan City, an oil-and-seafood hub and a community of 12,000, and eventually into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Krotz Springs area was in a sliver of land about 70 miles long and 20 miles wide, north of Morgan City, and could get water in about 12 hours. The finger-shaped strip of land was expected to eventually be inundated with 10- to 20-feet of water, according to Army Corps of Engineers estimates.
The water wasn’t expected to reach Morgan City until around Tuesday.
Engineers feared that weeks of pressure on the levees could cause them to fail, swamping New Orleans under as much as 20 feet of water in a disaster that would have been much worse than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Even though water was being releasing from the river, the levees were still being put to the test for a couple of weeks.
“These levees will be under a lot of pressure for a long period of time,” said Corps Col. Ed Fleming.
The corps blew up a levee in Missouri — inundating an estimated 200 square miles of farmland and damaging or destroying about 100 homes — to take the pressure off the levees protecting the town of Cairo, Ill., population 2,800.
This intentional flood is more controlled, however, and residents are warned by the corps each year in written letters, reminding them of the possibility of opening the spillway, which is 4,000 feet long and has 125 bays.
At the site of the spillway, a vertical crane was positioned to hoist the gate panel and the let water out. On one side of the spillway, water was splashing over the gates. The other side was dry.
Typically, the spillway is dry on both sides. But when the river rises to historic levels, like the marks seen over the past couple of weeks, it is flooded, and holds the Mississippi in place.
The spillway, built in 1954, is part of a flood plan largely put into motion in the 1930s in the aftermath of the devastating 1927 flood that killed hundreds.
This is the second spillway to be opened in Louisiana. About a week ago, the corps used cranes to remove some of the Bonnet Carre’s wooden barriers, sending water into the massive Lake Ponchatrain and eventually the Gulf of Mexico.
By Sunday, all 350 bays at the 7,000-foot structure were to be open. The spillways could be opened for weeks, or perhaps less, if the river flow starts to subside.
In Vicksburg, Miss., where five neighborhoods were underwater, a steady stream of onlookers posed for pictures on a river bluff overlooking a bridge that connects Louisiana and Mississippi. Some people posed for pictures next to a Civil War cannon while others carried Confederate battle flags being given away by a war re-enactor.
Vicksburg was the site of a pivotal Civil War battle and is home to thousands of soldier graves.
James Mims, 50, drove about an hour from Calhoun, La., with his wife, son and three grandchildren to snap a photo.
“It’s history in the making and we’re seeing it happen,” Mims said.
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Deslatte reported from Krotz Springs. Associated Press writer Holbrook Mohr in Vicksburg, Miss., also contributed to this report.