Aerial Footage of the Morganza Spillway Opening

[telemetry9]

Flooding is GOOD for the land. Human beings stopping that flood by building dams are strangling the life of the river and estuaries and deltas which are vital for millions of young fish to mature in.

The colorado delta (now a desert); would be but one example. Floods restore nutrients to the land - which is why many farmers grow crops near rivers. Let the rivers flood for a healthier planet. It's that simple.

Agriculture will slowly die without flooding. FACT! We need to get in balance.

[xDominickx554x]

i passed by the spillway a couple days after they opened it and i saw so many people bowfishing on the other side. just wannted to go home and get my bow and join them

[ptaylor7805]

Amazing. I looked up the location of the spillway on Google Maps out of curiousity and I was surprised that it is approx. 2 km west of the normal river bank. I thought the spillway was on the river bank. The Mississippi side of the gates looks like a sea or at the very least a large lake (like Pontchartrain) and it's close to the road bed. God bless all of those people that are in this situation.

[jhnb12876]

@ptaylor7805 that's because what you are looking at is a diversion gate of the mississppi river.Historicly a certain percentage of the water in the river went into the atchafalaya river basin to the gulf of mexico. These levees and gates were put there to control the river from turning because it is trying to.So must of the river would continue on it's persent course because the river was trying to shift the amount of water from the course now to the basin and they do not want that.

[ORYAN918]

what if they cant get these old gates to shut?

[whodat1x]

@ORYAN918

The Morganza is a 'Dry' spillway. Once the Mississippi goes down to normal levels, the spillway will be high and dry.

[ORYAN918]

i dont think its going to help! What is going on!

[jhnb12876]

@ORYAN918 what????? this IS the reason why baton rouge and New orleans will not flood.

[muddy08700]

The spillway has over 120 gates. Plan is to eventualy open between 30 and 40 gates.

[chrisdier]

@muddy08700 Send me a message or something when that happens. I'll try to get a video of it for everyone. Hopefully, I'll find out about any more openings right away so people can see it as it happens.

[drewzilla652]

Two gates open = 1/2 the flow of Niagara Falls. All gates open = a day's worth of Niagara Falls each hour.

[hobbeekid]

Man imagine all 64 or however many of those gates open at one time! it's surreal to think about the amount of flooding that could happen. it's like opening a pandora's box.....

[clintonearlwalker]

@hobbeekid I expect that's why they only opened one gate so far, so the people that live downstream can see where the water is going to go and whether they need to evacuate. I expect they will slowly open more gates and increase the amount of water being diverted. As opposed to opening them all at once and catching anyone still in the flood plain unaware.

[hobbeekid]

@clintonearlwalker The army core stated in their news conference that the crest / bulk of the river water hasn't even reached the area yet.It'll be real interesting to see how this plays out.hopefully things will work out for the better and those flood control structures will keep everything in check to a certain degree,but there's no predicting what that river's going to do....

[clintonearlwalker]

@hobbeekid After watching this video again and seeing how close the water is to the highway, I doubt the corps of engineers had any choice about opening the spillway. If the crest hasn't gotten there yet, when it does it would probably overflowed the spillway and highway anyway. I remember once many years ago when the Mississippi flooded I seen a satellite pic it looked like the middle third of the US was under water. It's probably like that again now.

[Hermanhusband]

Those poor camera operators! Watching them drag their heavy equipment across the hot concrete for a mile was painful. Thanks to them for covering this thing, up close. Let's hope this structure or the Old River Structure, doesn't cut loose and let the Mississippi slip her channel for good or it's good bye New Orleans (and good bye Morgan city).

[snowillard]

The gates are being opened incrementally to minimize other pressures that could become a problem on the levies down and up river these are saturated mounds of earth and the pressure releasing to quickly could also cause other unforeseen problems. I dont think visual impact is really an issue here. It more a matter of 40 years of ignorance as to what will happen if this isn't managed correctly.

[jbealvid]

Doesn't seem like enough of an opening to do much good.



[Pangolinx1]

It's clear the spillway opening is being managed in small increments to minimize the initial visual impact. considering the entire area next to the spillway is usually well above water they are going to have to open more than two gates and open them further to relieve the pressure.

I'm just waiting for the levee next to the spillway to get a boil. If that happens the Mississipi could take a sharp turn east.