The little known Old River Control Structure (bottom center) is a frail line of defense between the raging Mississippi River (top) and a total dislocation of the US economy, by way of the Atchafalaya River (bottom).
[Reposted from June because it’s happening again in July]
The United States economy right now, this week, faces a risk of catastrophic disruption that has been approached only four times in the last century. And CNN isn’t covering it.
The Mississippi River has for nearly a hundred years been trying to change course at the northern border of Louisiana, with catastrophic consequences for the economy of the United States. The river wants to switch to the course of the Atchafalaya River, and enter the Gulf at Morgan City, 65 miles west of New Orleans. This would cut off deep-water access for the Port of New Orleans and every industry located on the lower Mississippi River: taken together, the busiest port system in the world.
It almost happened in the Great Flood of 1927. It started to happen in the 1950s — up to 30 percent of the river was diverting to the Atchafalaya. Thereafter, Congress passed a law forbidding the river from making the change and giving the US Army Corps of Engineers responsibility for enforcing the prohibition. Their response was multifaceted, but key to it was the Old River Control Structure — a massive barrier across one of the closest approaches of the rivers to each other — about 200 miles north of New Orleans.
Floods in 1973 almost took the new structure out. They strengthened it, and the floods of 2011 tested it almost to the limit. This week, floods of a magnitude not seen since the Great Flood of 1927 are going to test it again, sorely. On Sunday, June 9, the Corps is going to open the floodgates of the Morganza Spillway, near Baton Rouge to try to bleed of the enormous flows of water from a month of Midwest flooding just now reaching the lower Mississippi. Morganza is downstream from the Old River Control Structures, and was built before them, also to keep the Mississippi out of the Atchafalaya, and has been opened before only in 1973 and 2011. And forecasters say there is a good chance a tropical storm now moving north through the western Gulf could drench the region anew later this week.
I wrote about this threat in Brace for Impact. When I went to work on the book I had been writing about the earth sciences, the environment and wildlife for 20 years and had never heard of the titanic (!) standoff at Old River until I came across John McPhee’s hair-igniting account of the near failure of 1973. My post Mississippi Rising: Apocalypse Now? on April 28, during the 2011 floods, remains by far the most-viewed story in the 10-year history of this website. My novel Tribulation begins with an imagining of how the river cold change course and how that event would destroy the United States.
Needless to say, I am going to be a little tense this week. But don’t worry, be happy, it’s probably nothing. If on the other hand you do want to worry, here’s some reading material for you on the events of 2011, now being replicated, if not exceeded, on the river:
Mississippi Rising: Apocalypse Now?
The Flood Last Time: Almost Apocalypse
Mississippi Rising: Act of God, or of the Corps?
Mississippi Falling: Now What?
Have a nice week.
This related story published today,here in Australia.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/how-the-pentagon-is-adapting-to-climate-change-in-the-trump-era/11089134
“Congress passed a law forbidding the river from making the change and giving the US Army Corps of Engineers responsibility for enforcing the prohibition.”
thank you, tom, for that one. you have an uncanny knack for pointing us at the idiocy of the current era.
What sanctions can the Mississippi River expect when it does, finally, break the law?
You cannot indict a flowing river, so it will have to be impeached.
Industrial players will boycott the missing river until it returns to it’s previous course. Rivergime change will be forced upon it.
Good one.
Astrologically, on June 09/10 a Grand Cross forms in the mutable signs involving the Sun in Gemini opposed Jupiter in Sagittarius, while the Sun in the same two-day period squares Neptune in Pisces and is squared by the Moon in Virgo. This planetary pattern with its themes of swelling (Sun/Jupiter in opposition) and broaching (Sun/Neptune in square) makes a fitting expression for a storm surge. In the following week Mars in Cancer will oppose the Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn, signifying havoc. Often it means double trouble when cosmic and meteorological conditions line up in this way.
We don’t need to look at stars for evidence that SHTF time is at hand!
Too true! We don’t need no stinkin’ river to change course in order to destroy civilization. We can handle that without undue outside influence.
Actually, the shape we are in at this time culturally, economically, politically, IMO, the approaching collapse is inevitable and necessary. The bureaucratic rot is too deep; bring on the purge. We are Americans, after all; we could show the French how to bleed, eh?
Just, wow.
I have been amazed at the lack of in-depth coverage of the flooding (although I don’t know why I expected better in this age of dumbed-down human interest stories substituting for hard news). All 3 major networks have pix and some commentary almost every night, but of course not one word about climate change’s relation to these events or about the potential consequences of the country’s breadbasket being flooded. And now this.
Tom, thanks for your blog and please keep the entries coming.
Lots of fields (mostly corn and soy) around Columbus haven’t even been planted yet – too wet! I think it’s worse as you move west. In any event, corn prices are bound to go up. This is sure to reverberate throughout the agricultural food chain, and thus the entire economy…At my house we’ve been stocking up.
Meanwhile, where are all the bees? I haven’t seen one damn bee!