re: South Mississippi groups sound alarm on potential Bonnet Carre Spillway opening

FWIW, the Morganza spillway should always have one or two bays open to slowly introduce water downstream and give wildlife/ farmers enough time to move off of the flood zone. In reality, no one should be allowed to farm that area. By the time the corps of engineers issues warnings that they may have to open it, its too late to make a difference.

While we're talking about it, that 1.5 m CFM number they love throwing around was introduced 50 years ago. The river has silted in majorly since then and requires catastrophic flooding to hit the benchmark (which is only when they will start to DISCUSS opening it.)

Leave Morganza open, blow up the levees south of New Orleans in Plaquimines parish, never worry about Baton Rouge or NOLA flooding again.

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It's true though. Causes osmotic stress in the dolphins' skin cells, the cells die, which leads to infections.

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I wonder what happened to the bottle nosed dolphins and the oyster beds before humans ever built flood control structures and the river flooded its natural banks into the saltwater estuaries semi-regularly?

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This is a great question that these environmental wackos would ignore.

I don’t think it is humanly possible for me to care less about the damn porpoise population. All they do is ruin my fishing trips experience regularly.

Lemon Garlic Sauteed Dolphin

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Nothing, because the annual floods were so spread out. This is focused and channel freshwater flooding into the Mississippi Sound via Lakes Pontchartrain and Borgne.

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Are you thinking that fish kills dont happen normally during flood situations? Or droughts?

They shouldn’t open Bonnet Carre since this isn’t a prolonged rise. It’s going to crest and fall quickly.

Sorry Coastal Mississippi, you live next to the Mississippi River basin therefore it comes with the territory. You want dolphins, go live in Florida

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FWIW, the Morganza spillway should always have one or two bays open to slowly introduce water downstream and give wildlife/ farmers enough time to move off of the flood zone. In reality, no one should be allowed to farm that area. By the time the corps of engineers issues warnings that they may have to open it, its too late to make a difference.

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I said this a few weeks ago.

You probably could get away with allowing more water above the Congressionally mandated percent allotated to the Atchfalaya using the Old River Control Structure. I think they have done that in the past to alleviate opening the Morganza. Opening Morganza has its own risks and typically requires repairs after opening.

Likewise, Morganza should have been constructed with a water channel to allow water to flow into the Atchfalaya instead of flooding the farmland for minor openings. Now if the stage gets too high and the River does need to have it opened fully, then all bets are off on preventing the farmland from flooding.

Also more water could be pumped into Bayou Lafourche and other distributaries although the river. But that is the equivlent of using a straw to empty a swimming pool. There is ongoing construction on a new pumpstation in Donaldsonville, but construction is still ongoing for the new pumps that will allow 1,000 cfs of water down the bayou up from the 450 cfs already there. You could possible put some temporary pumps there to increase the flow, also you could add some more pumps to projects like Davis Pond or Davis Trickle as I like to call it.

The big issue in the past with too much water down the Atchfalaya was backwater flooding in Morgan City and the Lake Palourde above Morgan City. Now there is a flood gate that can be closed in Bayou Chene that will prevent most of the water from flooding Morgan City on the back side. In the past, they would rent and sink a barge for this. Now they built one for this type of flooding event and can close it for even hurricane events. They closed it on April 14 as a preventative to keep the rising water out.

Morganza should be opened before the Bonnet Carre. The fresh water has changed the Pontchartrain area over the past 2 decades. The Atchafalaya basin is where fresh water is supposed to go.

Highest crest since 2020 is forecast, but over 3 feet lower. 2011 was 45 feet. Still could get higher in the next several weeks.

Recent Crests

1. 35.68 ft on 03-23-2022
2. 39.09 ft on 04-17-2021
3. 44.35 ft on 04-16-2020
4. 44.18 ft on 03-18-2019
5. 43.78 ft on 03-19-2018
6. 40.60 ft on 05-30-2017

Historic Crests

1. 47.28 ft on 05-15-1927
2. 45.18 ft on 05-16-1922
3. 45.18 ft on 04-29-1945
4. 45.01 ft on 05-18-2011
5. 44.58 ft on 04-16-1945
6. 44.48 ft on 02-28-1937
7. 44.35 ft on 04-16-2020