Tale of Two Levees: MRGO, Louisiana and Wood River, Illinois

The following quotation from my upcoming book, The Mississippi, explains the vulnerability of levees:
“As massive as they are, levees are fragile come floodtime. Leave a stick in the levee during construction, when it rots, it creates a cavity, weakening the levee. Let a small animal or crawdad burrow into the levee, it creates a cavity, weakening [...]

MRGO behaving oddly

MRGO, constructed in 1965 as a short cut from the Gulf of Mexico to the Port of New Orleans,  has been officially closed for several weeks now. It will remain a factor in the landscape for a long time, until a second closure is made at Bayou Bienville, close to New Orleans, and until the [...]

MRGO is Closed but not Gone

I am working on the index and page proofs for my book on the Mississippi River, how it was formed, what we have done to change it, and how we are trying to restore it.
Hence, I present you with an oldie, but goody: MRGO. Go to my catagories section and find the other postings on [...]

MRGO and the Manchac Landbridge

 
Six streams flowed to Lake Maurepas including the Amite River and Bayou Manchac, a distributary of the Mississippi until Andrew Jackson built an earthen dam across its head in 1814. Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville discovered that the Bayou could be a shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico in 1699. Before its closing overflow from the [...]

Earth Day: MRGO Closed

 
It’s Earth Day 2009 and MRGO is closed to navigation, but it’s still there, still conveying salt water into the intermediate and fresh wetlands of the Pontchartrain Basin. Until it is truly closed and filled in, it is not really gone.
We have already seen the damage it caused to Bayou Bienvenue in the the immediate [...]

Throwing Stones at MRGO–Part 2

 
The Corps of Engineers will finish the rock wall across MRGO by the beginning of this year’s hurricane season. At seven feet it is not tall enough to stop storm surges, but it will stop salt water intrusion into the marshes east of the Bayou la Loutre ridge and the MRGO spoil bank.
 
Not everyone is [...]

MRGO is Going

 
 The closure of MRGO is 15% complete and the citizens of St. Bernard Parish will hasten the process along a bit. They will hold a ceremony and throw stones at the site of the closure.

Ecosystem Restroation as Infrastructure–Houma Nav, Part 2

Maintaining the spoil banks along the completed canal became a critical factor in reducing the amount of saltwater that bled from the channel into the adjacent wetlands. In 1995 the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources closed four breaches with rock in the west bank of the Houma Nav. Ten years later the agency rocked 7,572 [...]

Ecosystem Restoration as Infrastructure–MRGO Part 6

In March 2007 the New Orleans Times-Picayune created a flow chart of the approval process for coastal restoration projects, actually for any large restoration project in any state.
The chart illustrated the bureaucratic roadblocks to ecosystem restoration.
A state, a county, or, in Louisiana, a parish identifies a project and asks its Congressional representation to initiate a [...]

Ecosysem Restoration as Infrastructure–MRGO Part 5

 
The construction company building the closure will barge stone down the Mississippi River through Baptiste Collette near Venice, travel across Breton Sound, and access the MRGO from the east.  The company had to take this route because the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal  gives barges access to MRGO from the Mississippi and  the canal is closed, because the [...]