re: Amite River dredging to begin next year

We’ll have to wait until the next 100 year rain event before we will be able to judge dredge.

Wondering how this will affect the surrounding swamps, will they drain into the deeper channeling of the Amite?

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The weir was designed to send water down the Amite River but it failed and 80% of the water goes down the diversion canal instead. The lower Amite River is silted in and stagnant and as shallow as 4 feet while the diversional canal is 30 feet deep. The lower Amite is a mini-old river control structure failure that no one notices. Of course this dredging is only for a tiny stretch from Lake Maurepas to highway 22. The long stretch from highway 22 to the diversional canal isn't funded.. which means good luck.

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Water always takes the shortest steepest path. That is why Mississippi wants to flow into the Atchafalaya, it is a shorter straighter path.

The crazy part is that they can dredge all they want in the Amite, it will silt in again. Now that you have the diversion channel stealing the flow.

High water events would normally scour a channel to keep it from silting up, but once you start messing with the hydraulics and send water elsewhere like a diversion channel, it lowers the flow in the main channel and allows the main channel to silt in.

See the Mississippi River Delta and the level of dredging that goes on to maintain the river at 45 or 50 feet in Southwest Pass.

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What I’m still searching my head over is how is St. John able to build a flood wall across the whole parish just about to block surge from the lake by diverting it elsewhere. I get wanting to protect your area but how do you have the right to just Chanel it up the road. The water has to go somewhere. Think it was St Tammany that walled up first and flooded St John. At this point it might actually be cheaper to have pooled the money and built a wall across the rigolets.

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The Lake Pontchartrain/Maurepas basin is so vast. Neither has a measurable impact on the other. This has been modeled and proven extensively by the state and the feds. An analogy would be like saying St Tammany stuck their finger into a swimming pool with their levees, technically raising water levels. Then St Charles/St John did the same. Neither is affecting the other.

Walling off the Rigollettes has been proposed by the feds as far back as the 70s/80s (side note, Draining New Orleans by Richard Campanella is a great book). It has been proven to be a good idea for LA but it would redirect enough water to have negative impacts in MS and they will fight hard against it.

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Walling off the Rigollettes has been proposed by the feds as far back as the 70s/80s (side note, Draining New Orleans by Richard Campanella is a great book). It has been proven to be a good idea for LA but it would redirect enough water to have negative impacts in MS and they will fight hard against it.

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I have always thought of this as a meaningful idea, but big hurricanes like Ida find other methods of chaos.

Look at Terrebonne parish for Ida. While Ida stayed to the east of Terrebonne, storm surge from the gulf was barely an issue. The issue that crept up was that the levees worked too well. They kept the water in. So around Lake Boudreaux some areas saw flooding from lake water being pushed around. It even pushed out the Bubba Dove Floodgate and damaged some trees other structures.


You could say the same thing about Lake P. Blocking it in may lessen the Gulf Surge, but the lake would still push a lake surge based on the wind.

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Walling off the Rigollettes

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Don’tt makke thinggs morre difficcullt thann theyy alreaddyy are.