Jason called the other night at 1am. "How does Richie feel about the river?" he asks. "Is he moving things into the attic?"
In this laissez-faire city of New Orleans, it hasn't even really been too much of a topic of conversation. I can only explain it with a quote from The Wind in the Willows "The mole knew well that it is quite against animal-etiquette to dwell on possible trouble ahead, or even allude to it; so he dropped the subject."
Yesterday morning we went out to the opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway. It basically works like this, the Mississippi levees can only handle about a 20 feet rise, we were at 17 yesterday and the crest of the mississippi is in Memphis right now, flooding homes and displacing people.
In the past when the Mississippi got unusually high, I never really understood how it was taken care of. I assumed that if you engineered such a huge river into a channel instead of spreading across the entire Mississippi delta as it once did, then a little rise was no big deal. The spillway wasn't built until after the great flood of 1927. "It was first opened during the flood of 1937, and nine times thereafter through 2011 to lower river stages at New Orleans." ( Baton Rouge Advocate. http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/18440594.html?showAll=y&c=y. Retrieved 2008-05-01.)
Do you remember that feeling of when your father would throw you into the air, and you knew you would always be caught? That trust? I don't trust machines that much now. Don't trust airplanes, nor breathing devices. I can ride my bike and breath on my own. But when I was young, I wanted to be a pilot, a scuba diver, and an astronaut. As I grew older I realized that I did not want to put so much faith in machines to keep me alive.
I live in New Orleans and the mere fact that this place still exists has a lot to do with machines, engineering, structures, pumps, all kinds of man made operations. I guess I'm fine with the contradiction mostly because it's not blatant. The opening of the Bonnet Carré Spillway has made me come face to face with my contradictions.
"Downriver, anxiety and preparations continued to mount. As some state prisoners were filling sand bags in Mississippi and Louisiana, about 200 inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, which is bordered on three sides by the Mississippi, have been evacuated and more will move soon.
On Monday morning, before a crowd of onlookers, the Army Corps of Engineers partly opened the Bonnet Carré spillway, allowing some of the river to flow into Lake Pontchartrain and thus relieving pressure as the Mississippi approaches New Orleans.
But that is not likely to be enough, and corps officials have requested permission from the Mississippi River Commission, a federal advisory agency, to open the Morganza spillway in Louisiana. That spillway has been opened only once, in 1973, and even a partial opening would result in widespread flooding that would affect thousands of people in parts of southern Louisiana. " (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/us/11river.html)
The only time they opened the Morganza Spillway was in 1973, and when they tried to close it, they had to sink barge after barge into the river to get it to stop going that way. Richie says that the river has been trying to go that way for a long time, maybe 100 years and we keep fighting it. It seems an odd beast.
If either the Morganza Spillway or the Old River Control Structure were to fail, the consequences for Louisiana, the region, the nation, and international commerce would be immense. In this event, the main channel of the lower Mississippi River would likely change permanently to the Old River and Atchafalya River channels in the Atchafalaya Basin, thus bypassing Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Existing port facilities may have to be relocated or replaced, as would Morgan City and many smaller communities. Transportation by road, rail, sea, and barge would all be dramatically affected. Sedimentation and erosion patterns would change, including development of a new river channel and delta, as well as a new pattern of floodplains. Changes to salinity of coastal waters (less saline near new delta, more saline near present delta) would affect marine life, fisheries, beaches, and coastal marshes, as well as submerged infrastructure.[3][17](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morganza_Spillway)
All I'm going to say is, my horoscope said this month would be calm. Calm my ass.
xoxo
