Mississippi River flood: US to open Louisiana gates
The Morganza Floodway was completed in 1954 and is 20 miles (32.2km) long and five miles wide US engineers are preparing to flood up to three million acres in southern Louisiana in a bid to protect large cities along the Mississippi River.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it could open a floodway to divert water from the river this weekend. As many as 25,000 people are preparing to leave.
Opening the Morganza Floodway would ease pressure on levees protecting the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
The Mississippi River has risen to levels not seen in decades this year.
Fed by rainwater and the spring thaw, the river and its tributaries have caused massive flooding upstream, and officials have said the flooding in Louisiana is the worst since 1927.
If, as expected, the Army Corps of Engineers this weekend opens the Morganza floodway for the first time in 38 years, it will unleash Mississippi River water through the Atchafalaya River basin, flooding parts of seven parishes in southern Louisiana near the Gulf of Mexico.
Much of the water would end up in swamplands, bayous and backwater lakes but several thousand homes are at risk of flooding.
"My message to our people is they don't need to be delaying," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said on Thursday. "Move their valuables. Think about where they would go."
Earlier this week, the Mississippi River flooded parts of Memphis, Tennessee, the city famed as one of the birthplaces of rock and roll and blues music.
Further upstream, the Army Corps of Engineers has opened floodways in Missouri to keep pressure off levees protecting the town of Cairo, Illinois.
The US government has said farmers whose land has been flooded will be reimbursed for destroyed crops.
No comments:
Post a Comment