Channeling Dakota

22 March 2010. The Associated Press is reporting a proposed $1.3 B 36-mile channel system through the Red River Valley. Read more about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project here.

Image above: Jeff Roberson, AP photographer. Doug Rensvold Driving Through Floodwater in Gardner, North Dakota. 22 March 2010.

This past weekend, UCLA Geographer Nick Bauch and I went out to the Morganza (Pointe Coupee Parish), Louisiana Control Structure (image above). The Morganza Spillway (1957-1986) serves to prevent the Atchafalaya River from capturing the Mississippi.

The structure is located just to the North of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary and just to the South of the Old River Control Complex. Project maps, test piles, and other preliminary data sets are outlined in George Stevenson's Final Report, Morganza Floodway Bridge, at Lottie, Louisiana, with test pile data on other crossings of the Morganza Floodway (Baton Rouge, LA, 1943), housed in Tulane University's Louisiana Research Collection. View U.S. Army Corps photographs and maps here.

Images above: Nick Bauch, photographer.The Morganza Spillway (Control Structure). 21 March 2010.