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I used to write about Mississippi River floods due to Corps of Engineers projects. Yep, that’s right. The Corps causes floods. Wait, you thought rain caused floods. OK, it does. But the Corps makes floods worse for some and better for others. Its levees make flooding worse for those inside the levees. And better for those outside the levees.
The Corps Old River Control Complex (ORCC) near Louisiana’s Angola Prison just south of the Mississippi line makes flooding worse inside the levees. The flooding affects about a half million acres in Mississippi and Louisiana owned by over 500 plaintiffs who sued the Corps in 2019 for taking their properties. I’m one of those plaintiffs. I quit writing about floods when I became one. I’m starting again. I can’t wait on the courts. I’ll be dead. My boys may be too.
Sometimes the Corps pays for flood easements before the fact. Most of the time it floods first and pays damages later – if courts make it. That’s what it’s done with flooding caused by the ORCC. But it hasn’t paid because courts take forever. That’s good for the Corps because plaintiffs don’t live forever. The Corps does.
The Corps default defense is to obfuscate (lie) and delay. Justice delayed is justice denied for plaintiffs. It’s a win for the Corps and the Generals who command the Mississippi River Commission and the ORCC. Their tour of duty is typically 2-3 years. Then they move on to their next star – with no regrets for the damage they denied and ignored. They kick the can. They don’t make waves. They didn’t get to be Generals by being dumb.
The ORCC story begins with a big Mississippi River flood in 1950. Part of the flood took a shortcut to Gulf via the Atchafalaya River. It discharged near Morgan City LA instead of New Orleans. The Mississippi was trying to change course to find the shortest steepest route to the Gulf. Gravity makes it do that every 800 years or so when the old route silts in. Congress passed the 1954 Flood Control Act telling the Corps to ignore gravity and keep the Mississippi River in its old channel.
So the Corps built the Old River Control Structure in 1963 to do that. It diverted 23% of the Mississippi’s flow down the Atchafalaya and kept 77% in the main channel. That was the split in 1950. Peas porridge just right. Gravity didn’t think it was just right though. In a really big flood in 1973, the river broke through the control structure and sent more flow down the steeper Atchafalaya where gravity wanted it to go. Water just naturally flows downhill.
The Corps ignored Mother Nature again. It repaired and added to the old structure (now called the ORCC) in 1980 to keep 77% of the river flowing where the Corps wanted it to flow. Then it stuck a finger in Mother Nature’s eye. It agreed to operate a new structure
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