Power Plant at ORCS Will cripple Mississippi River eventually

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"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." — Upton Sinclair, 1934

Sinclair was writing about California politics in the 1930s. He could have been writing about Mississippi River Commission (MRC) politics today. Its Commanding General’s next star (salary) may depend on your not understanding Mudberg.

Mudberg is a sediment plug in the river that reduces the Mississippi’s discharge to the Gulf (about 23% less when above flood stage) and makes floods inside the levees higher, longer, and more destructive. The MRC supervises the Corps of Engineers (Corps). The Corps caused Mudberg. The Generals understand that but don’t want you to understand that — and hold the Corps responsible.

So if you own land inside the levees, they tell you to blame your floods on Nature’s 8% more rain. They don’t tell you about Mudberg’s 23% less drain and its damage to a million acres inside the levees from Baton Rouge to above Greenville. Or that the Corps predicts worse floods are coming. Or that those floods won’t be as bad if the Corps dredges Mudberg — which it has no plans to do.

The Generals also understand that Mudberg will cause a catastrophe if it makes the Mississippi River change course (avulse) to the Atchafalaya. Here’s what the Corps brochure on the Old River Complex says about that:

“If the Mississippi changed course, it would turn the present river channel into a saltwater estuary, and the effects on southern Louisiana would be catastrophic. Corporations have constructed billions of dollars worth of petrochemical plants, refineries, grain elevators, and fossil fuel and nuclear electrical generating plants, most of which depend on fresh water for their manufacturing process, along both banks of the Mississippi River. Also, cities below Baton Rouge, including New Orleans, would be hard-pressed to find drinking water.”

The Mississippi started to change course in 1950. Congress told the Corps to stop it. That’s like telling the Corps to stop gravity. Gravity makes the river find a steeper channel to the Gulf when the old channel silts in. That happens every thousand years or so. It’s happening now. The Atchafalaya is steeper.

The Corps couldn’t stop gravity. But it built a control structure in 1963 at the juncture of the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya to delay its effects. And it has for 63 years despite a close call in the 1973 flood. It was damaged in that flood, repaired, and expanded in 1980. That structure is the Old River Control Complex (ORCC), located just below the MS-LA state line. In 1990, the Corps changed its operation to favor a small hydroelectric plant. That change caused Mudberg to form.

What did the Corps change? Congress told it to maintain 23% of the Mississippi’s flow to the Atchafalaya that existed in 1950 and to maintain the flow of sediments “in desirable proportions” to minimize natural sediment buildup in the main channel. Experts designed ORCC to do that. The Corps operated it as designed with little sedimentation until 1990.

Then the Corps changed how it operated ORCC to send part of the 23% flow containing almost no sediments to the hydroelectric plant. That decreased sediments going to the Atchafalaya and increased sediments left in the main channel. They fell out and began to form Mudberg. Did Congress tell the Corps to make that change? Did it know that Corps measurements in 1995 showed Mudberg was growing? Did it know that Corps measurements from 2008-15 showed a 23% decrease in flow to the Gulf of Mexico below Mudberg? And that the decrease and an 8% increase in rain caused record-long floods from 2016-19? And that those floods caused permanent damage to land inside levees from Baton Rouge to above Greenville? Do landowners inside the levees know?

The Generals didn’t tell landowners. They said the flooding was due to Nature’s 8% more rain. They didn’t mention Mudberg’s 23% less drain. I testified before the MRC four times from 2016-17 to ask why my land was flooding more. I got the same answer: more rain. In 2018, I learned the real reason. LSU’s Dr. Y. Jun Xu published a paper explaining that sediments had built a 30-foot-high mound in the channel below ORCC and had narrowed the channel by a half mile. And that this constriction (Mudberg) reduced flow, made floods higher and longer, and increased the risk that the river would avulse in a big flood. His analyses used Corps data.

With that understanding, I recently testified again to ask: will the Corps dredge Mudberg, warn landowners about even worse floods it predicts, and mitigate their damage? The response: The Corps will dredge for navigation, but not for flooding because that’s a big job that might cause downstream problems. The Corps is studying future flooding.

I understand the Corps Generals think it’s OK for the Corps to flood land inside the levees. One said the 2017 flood was “a non-event” because there was no flooding outside the levees — even though land inside the levees in the Natchez reach flooded for 4 months. He also said the Corps could use land inside the levees to convey floods. He didn’t say the Corps would pay for permanent damage that caused.

The Corps ignores Mudberg’s higher and longer floods inside the levees because there’s not enough pushback. It ignores Mudberg’s increased risk of course change because there’s no pushback. That will be the greatest natural disaster in our country's history.

This is to help CEOs with plants on the river understand their risk, push back, and get Louisiana’s congressional delegation to insist that the Corps dredge Mudberg and that the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee put a line item for it in the next appropriations bill. The Corps may delay the inevitable catastrophic course change long enough to implement a less damaging managed course change — by dredging Mudberg.

But it dithers.

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