The water there is two different shades. The muddier-colored water is believed to be the leading edge of the water being diverted from the Mississippi River. It has now reached about four or five miles south of Interstate 10 on the eastern side. Areas near there that had been dry are now seeing water. Over the Atchafalaya Basin, the water is up near camps that line the western side. So far, none are inundated with water. It is still several feet away from the homes.
The National Weather Service has dropped the crest level of the Atchafalaya River at Butte La Rose from 27 feet to 24.5 Friday May 27. This means that fewer areas will flood in and around the Butte La Rose area northward through Krotz Springs...Flooding of some areas will still be possible however through the first week of June but water levels may be significantly lower as compared with the original Army Corps of Engineers forecast.
Butte la Rose is going under, but it’s not a “town” to speak of, it’s a collection of houses and camps, perhaps a 100 in all, at the end of a dead end road. And anyone who ever lived there knew quite well that they were in an area where water levels go up and down. So those people know what to do. And of the 3,000,000 acres flooded, only some 18,000 acres are farmland. And there’s supposedly 2,500 to 11,000 structures in flood’s way, depends on who counts what and how high the water goes where. Except, well, most of those are farm buildings, of course, and “camps.” And camps are the weekend homes of city dwellers. And the camps are often raised up on stilts precisely because everyone out there knows there’s flooding to contend with, even in a dry year. And so all the hand wringing over “Cajun Country” being flooded is just poor reporting. Go get a map for heaven’s sake, could it be that hard?
East Feliciana, Franklin, Lafourche and Richland parishes have been added to the original 22 parishes receiving federal funding to reimburse necessary emergency protective measures for potential flooding under President Obama's emergency disaster declaration issued on May 6.Via The Dead Pelican, this report from Monroe's News Star on the flooding of Mississippi River islands such as Davis Island and Fitler Bend:
The emergency declaration authorizes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency to support all disaster relief efforts in areas of Louisiana affected by flooding beginning on April 25, 2011, and continuing. Specifically, 22 parishes were included in the declaration, authorizing FEMA to provide appropriate assistance and resources to the state to save lives and to protect property, public health and safety throughout these communities.
In addition to the four recently added parishes, the 22 parishes previously made eligible for assistance are Avoyelles, Ascension, Assumption, Catahoula, Concordia, East Carroll, Iberia, Iberville, LaSalle, Madison, Pointe Coupee, East Baton Rouge, St. Charles, St. James, St. John, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, Tensas, Terrebonne, West Baton Rouge and West Feliciana.
Petrus said he remembers the 1973 and 2008 floods, "but they were nothing like this," he said.He's most distressed by the loss of wildlife on the islands.
"It's really sickening," Petrus said. "We've built a good deer herd on Davis Island, but the deer have either perished or won't come back.
"All of the deer, bears and turkey have either left or drowned. The whole thing is submerged."
The state may be missing a vital opportunity to divert desperately needed fresh water and river sediment into collapsing wetlands, mimicking the floods that originally built Louisiana's vanishing wetlands, coastal advocates say.
The Mississippi River is moving 1.9 million cubic feet of water and sediment past the eroding Louisiana coast and into the Gulf of Mexico, according to the America's Wetland Foundation. The Morganza and Bonnet Carre spillways have been opened to relieve pressure on flood-protection levees and lower Mississippi River levels to protect New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Morganza's resulting torrent is moving into the Atchafalaya Basin and threatens to flood homes in its path, including some in Terrebonne, Lafourche, Assumption and St. Mary parishes. Bonnet Carre is sending water and sediment through Lake Pontchartrain and into the Gulf. Some coastal advocates contend the state and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should open existing river diversions during times of flooding and build more along upper basins to take advantage of years when the river is high and sediment-laden.But others argue that huge coastal diversions would flood and displace residents living in the coastal communities that government should be trying to protect.
The Atchafalaya River at Butte La Rose in St. Martin Parish has risen only about a foot since the opening of the Morganza Spillway on Saturday, but the river there is expected to begin rising about a foot or more a day beginning Thursday until reaching a crest of nearly 27 feet early Tuesday morning, according to the NWS forecast.
As of this writing there are now 11 of 125 open in the Morganza Spillway; plans are to open 1/4 of the gates.Jindal said months of drought lowered water levels in the Ouachita and Red rivers, so less backwater flooding is expected in northern parishes. Drought also increased the soil's capacity to absorb water, slowing the movement of diverted river water that began flowing through the Morganza spillway over the weekend, Jindal said.
Col. Ed Fleming said Monday that the corps also has revised downward river crest estimates due to the spillway opening. The Bonnet Carre spillway near New Orleans also is operating.
The lessons of Hurricane Katrina have been learned, she said.
"They didn't die from Katrina; they died from the flood afterward," Thomasson said of those that perished in New Orleans in August 2005 as the hurricane ripped into the city, taking an estimated 1,836 lives. "That is so fresh in my mind! I am not keeping my babies in harm's way when I have a chance to get them out and keep them safe."
Louisiana's agriculture commissioner says farmers who had crop insurance will get reimbursed if their crops are damaged by flooding caused by the Mississippi. Commissioner Mike Strain said the U.S. Department of Agriculture had agreed to honor crop insurance payments for farmers with insurance that either lose crops or were unable to plant because of the flooding, in accordance with their policies.
"We're happy that USDA and FEMA have made a decision that is favorable for our producers," Strain said. "We wanted to make sure our farmers got the same deal as the Missouri farmers who lost their crops when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers artificially breeched the levee to save lives."
The Atchafalaya River was already rising toward record levels, and additional water flowing through the Morganza Spillway will only make matters worse.And here is The Advocate's report of the opening of the spillway yesterday, including reminiscences from old timers remembering the last time the gates opened:
“Just a little country town that don’t mean nothing,” said longtime Amelia resident Patricia Clark, who feared devastating flooding from of opening of the Morganza Spillway. “I think it will ruin this community. I think you can almost kiss everything goodbye.”
Others were more optimistic.
“We’re well protected. This is the safest place to be in Louisiana,” said Berwick Town Superintendent Allen Benoit.
Berwick, a town of about 5,000 people, sits across the Atchafalaya River from Morgan City.
Soon after opening the gate, corps officials ushered the crowd away from the oncoming water and up a hill leading to the top of the structure. On the way up, several people shared stories of their experiences from 38 years ago when the spillway was first opened.
Billy Soulier, a New Roads resident who hunts in the area below the spillway, said the atmosphere back then was more like a party and less like Saturday’s stuffy media event.
“We just got on our four-wheelers and rode around,” he said. “Everybody was having a good time.” New Roads City Councilman Kirk “Clipper” White said he and his high school friends were on the other side of the levee collecting the crawfish that were crawling out of the water looking for higher ground.
“We didn’t have anything to carry them with, so we just picked them up by hand and threw them in the back of the pickup,” he said. “We were just doing it for entertainment. There were so many, you couldn’t give them away.”Water is supposed to creep toward Krotz Springs today and the Army Corps of Engineers is expected to open two more gates today. Check back for updates.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened two floodgates on the Morganza spillway Saturday, for the first time in nearly 40 years. Two additional gates were opened about 10 a.m. Sunday, the Corps said.Everyone in the areas of Krotz Springs and Melville must be out by 5:00 this afternoon. The spillway has 125 gates and about a fourth of those are expected to be opened before this is all done.
"At this time, we are currently monitoring the river but it is too early to know if additional gates will be opened today," Corps spokesman Ricky Boyett wrote in an e-mail to CNN.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened five more bays Sunday evening. That brings the total to nine, of the number of bays sending water gushing from the Mississippi River into the Morganza Spillway and eventually into the Atchafalaya Basin.
Hundreds of people packed into the Butte La Rose firehouse to learn about the flood projections from the Army Corps of Engineers. Col. Ed Fleming delivered the dire news.
"Listen to me, listen to me, OK," he said. "I'm telling you the depth of water from right here will be 15 feet."
The number stunned the crowd. Pierre Watermeyer turned to friends and said, "It's over with, it's over with."
Randy Newman’s song, Louisiana 1927, hit home to many residents up and down the Mississippi river this week. He was singing about the 1927 flood, where more than 23,000 square miles were inundated, hundreds of people died, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless. As of right now, predictions are that water levels up and down the river will exceed those reached in the 1927 disaster. And no one really knows how bad it will get.
They finished harvesting 700 acres of wheat Tuesday, he said, but 450 acres of recently planted rice is expected to be a loss, not to mention soybeans that might not get in the ground this year because of the high water. There are an estimated 15,256 acres of farmland in the Morganza Spillway, plus another 2,853 in the fore bay area between the Mississippi River and spillway control structure, according to figures from the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry. The fore bay acreage is already flooding and the rest could be covered with more than 5 feet of water if the floodway is opened as expected, a move that could come as early as Saturday night.The spillway will begin opening shortly. There are news conferences scheduled at 1:00 and 2:30 p.m. by the Army Corps of Engineers, reports The Advocate:
The trigger for opening the structure is when 1.5 million cubic feet per second of water is flowing by the Red River Landing. Jindal said at midday Friday that the rate was 1.423 mcf per second.
“The fact they have given this order means their engineers have told them they expect to get to that 1.5 million cubic feet per second trigger,” Jindal said.
Water from the inflated Mississippi River is gushing through two floodgates of the Morganza Spillway for the first time in nearly four decades. The water is headed toward thousands of homes and farmland in the Cajun countryside, threatening to slowly submerge the land under water up to 25 feet deep.More pictures here.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened one bay of the Morganza Spillway Saturday afternoon and another bay later in the day, which will funnel 10,000 cubic feet per second of water from the Mississippi River from each floodgate.
It took about 15 minutes for the one 28-foot gate to be raised in the middle of the spillway. 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.
In an agonizing trade-off, Army engineers said they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as Saturday and inundate thousands of homes and farms in parts of Louisiana's Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm's way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.
