As Flood Waters Recede, New Land Appears in West Bay
Newer posts →As Flood Waters Recede, New Land Appears in West Bay
By David Muth, National Wildlife Federation On June 22, members of the Mississippi River Delta Restoration Campaign visited the West Bay Sediment Diversion site to make a preliminary assessment of effects of the great Mississippi River flood of 2011. What they found exceeded expectations. Standing where flood water had risen to waist deep level or even deeper, they now stood in ankle deep water on a hard sand bottom. Based on this observation, there is every expectation that when the Mississippi flood waters …
Hurricane Season Starts Today: A Renewed Call for Restoration
By Elizabeth Skree, Environmental Defense Fund The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) is predicting an above-average hurricane season, which starts today, so communities along Louisiana’s coast are bracing for yet another possible disaster. The historic Mississippi River floodwaters have barely begun to recede. Additionally, the Gulf is still recovering from last summer’s devastating BP oil disaster. These tragic events, in addition to the ongoing rapid land loss along Louisiana’s coast during the last eight decades, continue making the state’s …
Big Sky View of the Big Spring Floods: 2011 Mississippi River Flood Imagery
By Seyi Fayanju, Environmental Defense Fund When you hear about the floodwaters coursing through the Mississippi River Valley, it’s hard to visualize just how much water is rushing south towards the Gulf of Mexico. Now, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Mississippi River Floods May 2011 Flickr site, the Atlantic Magazine, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District’s Flood Fight 2011 Flickr site, Louisiana State University’s Earth Scan Laboratory and NASA’s Earth Observatory (to name a few), you can see the …
Natural Solutions for an Unnatural Disaster?
As the Mississippi River reaches historic flood levels, local communities and the entire nation watch and wait, hoping the levees will hold and that catastrophic flooding will be avoided. The safety of the people and towns along the Mississippi is the government’s first priority. But after the floodwaters recede, there will be tough questions to answer regarding river management and preventing future natural disasters. Was this flooding truly a natural disaster, or did poor government policies cause it or at …
Tagged ReportsHigh Waters Offer Sediment-Laden Lessons Amidst Flooding Tragedy [VIDEO]
By Craig Guillot, National Wildlife Federation Read this story in its entirety on NWF.org. (NWF) – As the rising waters of the Mississippi River continue to impact communities along its banks, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and flood control managers are desperately trying to mitigate the impacts. In Louisiana, the solution has been to open spillways that relieve pressure on the levees and divert some of the river’s waters to the Gulf of Mexico. The human consequences of this …
Mississippi Floods Overwhelm Aging Control System
By Paul Kemp (National Audubon Society) and John Day (Louisiana State University) Special to CNN (CNN) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday opened the Bonnet Carré Spillway for the 10th time since 1932. This 7,000-foot structure of gates on the east bank of the Mississippi River, 30 miles above New Orleans, relieves pressure on levees protecting the city by shunting river water into nearby Lake Pontchartrain. As the crest of the historic 2011 flood rolls downriver from …