Rural Louisiana has mixed feelings over flooding plan

Greg Flakus in Voice of America: As diverted water from the swollen Mississippi River flows through Louisiana's Morganza spillway and into the Achafalaya basin on its way to the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of people in the southern state are losing their homes, businesses and crops. The U.S. Corps of Engineers opened the spillway recently to protect the cities of Baton Rouge and New Orleans from major flooding. People in the flood plain, however, are paying a high price.

As the flood waters pour into the woods, fields and small towns along the Achafalaya River, people and wildlife are pouring out of the region, seeking higher ground. Many towns closer to the source of the water, the Morganza spillway, are already evacuated. The spillway was partially opened by the U.S. Corps of Engineers to relieve the rush of flood water on the Mississippi River that could devastate the state capital of Baton Rouge and the historic port city of New Orleans farther downstream.

In La Fourche Parish, in southern Louisiana, local officials are counting on levees as high as one-and-a-half meters to hold back flood waters, but some rural areas and homes outside the system likely will be inundated.

Parish spokesman Brennan Matherne said people there are not happy about the coming flood, but that most of them accept the decision made by the Corps of Engineers to flood their region rather than the much more populated urban areas.

“I think there is definitely mixed feelings," said Matherne. "I think most people who have settled here understood that they were building in a flood plain. I mean, we deal with disasters, unfortunately, almost on an annual basis - whether it be hurricanes, flooding or oil spills such as what happened last summer.”…

A 1999 photo by the Army Corps of Engineers of the Old River Control Structure at the juncture of the Mississippi River and the Atchafalaya River. In this photograph, the Mississippi River runs along the left and curves away to the right in the distance. The Atchafalaya River meets the Mississippi at three points and runs off to the bottom right. Control structures (dams) at each of the three forks of the Atchafalaya prevent most of the waters of the Mississippi from running into the Atchafalaya.