The Opening of Morganza - A Painful But Correct Choice

I saw this item this morning. See 'What gives them the right to flood us?' asks Gibson woman.

The opening of Morganza is heart breaking but from what I see on the TV and internet the residents on the whole are not bitter. They understood this was part of the bargain. After the horrific flood of 1927 choices had to made. Choices for the most part have benefited everyone. EVERYONE knows what they are getting into. On the whole the decades advantages of living in this beautiful region outweigh the rare occurrence we see today.

One pet peeve as to the media. This is being done to protect a LOT MORE than just New Orleans and Baton Rouge. There is a heck of lot more there than that including nuclear power plants, farms, and other urban and rural interests. A planned disaster is a lot better than a unplanned disaster. If a Levee blew in these areas there would be little time to get out. We could have another Katrina on our hands in a hurry. That is the whole reason we built this. To avoid another 1927 flood that could have even more tragic results today.

That being said its heartbreaking and I suspect some pictures of wildlife ( in which we giving every chance to try to escape even if it means slowing the flow) will cause howls of outrage. Someone and something is going to lose in all this.

There is an irony in all this. In the end the area and the coast will be better for this. Why is this such prime farmland? Because for thousands of years the rivers would overflow and deposit sediment. In fact one reason the coast is having problems is we are not allowing the river to do this more to replenish our coast land, swamps, and wetlands. One could ask the valid question in theory should some of these people allowed to be come back. That is if allowing a process that has occurred before recorded time to do it's work is a good thing. Maybe we could do this more in a controlled setting.

Maybe that will be a good that will come out of this. That is we will use nature (through much more limited and directed flooding ) to replenish this area and we can invest doing this on a controlled way in the future.

Regardless we are not out of the woods yet and a break in the levee that is under tremendous pressure could happen anywhere from Arkansas/Mississippi to the bottom of Louisiana.