Senator: Wait for Corps study to change flood control

Officials should wait for a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study before making decisions about flood control that could affect Morgan City and surrounding areas, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy said Thursday.
Cassidy toured the $80 million Bayou Chene Flood Control Structure and got a look at the Arulaq, the specially built Brice Civil Constructors dredge designed to keep the Atchafalaya River Bar Channel open for large vessels.
Cassidy visited Morgan City at a time when fundamental assumptions about control of Mississippi and Atch-afalaya River flooding are being re-examined.
During a series of high-water events since 2011, the Bonnet Carre Spillway has been opened six times, sending water into Lake Pontchartrain and eventually to the Mississippi Sound.
Interests in Mississippi and eastern Louisiana, including the fishing industry and environmentalists say the Mississippi River Commission and the Corps are too quick to open Bonnet Carre and too slow to use the Morganza Spillway, which would relieve Mississippi River flooding by sending more water into the Atchafalaya.
Mississippi officials point to the economic damage to shrimp fishing and oyster beds, to flooding and to effects on ecologically sensitive areas. And those interests have gone to Congress and the federal courts for relief.
An even more dramatic change is being discussed. Currently, 30% of the Mississippi’s water is diverted into the Atchafalaya system at the Old River Structure. There has been talk of increasing the percentage headed into the Atchafalaya, potentially increasing the flood risk for St. Mary Parish and the surrounding area and dumping more sediment into commercially important waterways.
Thursday in Morgan City, Cassidy, R-La., said the Corps study is needed to predict what he called the “second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-order effects.”
The senator pointed to the Bayou Chene structure as an example. A permanent flood gate that can be closed during high water is under construction in St. Mary. But it offers protection to six parishes.
“That’s a very simple watershed,” Cassidy said. “Think about the complexity of a system throughout the Mississippi as well as the Atchafalaya.”