Check out the River photos at Baton Rouge to show the flooding up the river from the Spillway.
River at Baton Rouge
Boy, I didn't realize I hadn't posted since Feb 25. Instagram is so easy to post on. But I like the ability of the Quilts and Dogs Blog to tell longer stories. I guess they both have good points.
I wanted to tell you about the trip on Saturday to Bonne Carre Spillway (pronounced bonnie carry). The Bonne Carre is the Pressure valve release, if you will, for the flooding of the Lower Mississippi River following a heavy snow or rain winter higher up. The Mississippi drains something like 32 states and 2 Canadian Provinces. All those snow storms affect us down here.
The water flows into Lake Pontchartrain and then out to the Gulf of Mexico.
We drove from Baton Rouge east on I-10 toward New Orleans and exited at Norco, LA.
As we neared the structure there was a thick, heavy, but low hanging fog that hugged the river.
This is the spillway area.
At river Road we encountered the Mississippi River Levee. The river is just on the other side of the levee. You can see how the road hugs the levee. 
This is just on the other side of the levee. The land between the actual levee and the river on the other side of the tree line there is called the Batture. Generally the batture is land and is used for recreation, picnic, campfires.
There are a lot of people who come to watch the opening of the bays. The Park Ranger told me that there were already 130 bays open and they average 30 a day. Their goal is to open 230.
The only difference is the History board because they have not updated it. Last year the Spillway was opened again and that makes the first back to back years in history.
Here are great photos from the website. The Ranger told me I could go to his website and take any of his photos for the blog or go to the Corps of Engineers and do the same thing. He was excited that I often showed Louisiana to people around the US and the World!
The structure looked like this in the fog. The 4 bays close to the shore are not opened because of potential erosion but you can see how fast the current is in the ones that are open.
This is an open bay
These are closed bays.
The bays consist of square wooden logs placed in a slot. They do leak and here you can see the water leaking through even though the logs are in place.
This is the Dow Chemical in Taft, Louisiana. What you can't see is that it is across the Mississippi River from where I was standing.
this is a tug boat sitting at the mouth of the strait that takes the water into the spillway. It is in the River.
One of the good things about the opening of the spillway is that the next year is generally a banner year for seafood. There were tons of people out there fishing on the bottom for the Channel Catfish but most were pulling up these Buffalo fish. You can see how large these guys are, they have lips that are on the bottom of their head so they can scour the bottoms of the lake. They usually live in Lake Pontchartrain.
New Orleans has a significant Vietnamese population. After the war many settled in the bayous to fish since it was similar to what they knew back in Viet Nam. There lots of them out fishing today!
Next I will show you the photos I took at the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, higher up on the Mississippi from the Spillway. It will show you why they are opening the Spillway.
We drove over a couple of rivers headed to the gulf from Florida. I am guessing there has been a lot of rain in Alabama and Georgia based on the river levels. Lots of water this year.
ReplyDeleteFascinating! I had not idea they had spillways in the lower Mississippi River. I think I just assumed all the water just ran all the way to the gulf. I love to learn something new.
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