re: What happens after the Mississippi changes course

But, over time, the elevation of the Mississippi, the floor of the river, slowly gets higher and higher as more sediment settles at the bottom. Likewise, the atchafalya slowly gets lower and lower as it settles and erodes away and there’s not enough flow from the Mississippi diverted through there to add enough sediment. Eventually the elevation difference between the 2 channels will be too great for the levees (which are made out of mud) to hold.

New Orleans would be a salt water port. The issue would be getting goods in and out of New Orleans. Morgan City probably would not survive but would not become the next New Orleans. Most likely, overland transportation would take over what used to be shipped down the river to N.O.

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Morgan City probably would not survive but would not become the next New Orleans.

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There was a PBS doc in the 80s narrated by Burt Lancaster called "Goodbye Louisiana".

In it the then-mayor of MC said he believed some day MC would be sacrificed to save NO.

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I don’t think we can accurately estimate this.

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There are people much smarter than you that get paid a lot of money to estimate things like this. It isn’t going to just randomly happen

Fisk, who was the master of these maps, estimated it back in I believe the 50s. A number of models have seemed to corroborate or at least predict the same results as his work (all simply done by hand with computing power).

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it won't for a very very long time.

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Famous last words

It will happen eventually.

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are you high or just stupid?

We can’t wait until the river comes back up to have this thread again?

Part of the water will be diverted to NOLA just like it is diverted down Atchafalaya now. Barge traffic to and from NOLA just like now. Ships would not got to Baton Rouge, unless serious dredging.

There is a rock ledge under the river just above 190 (old) bridge which is why the sand has build up all the way to ORCS, and the river is not dredged upstream of the bridge except to mine the sand.

Atchafalaya basin would silt up.

Laffy would NOT get a port.


MC would go bye bye.

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that any actual solution would likely be very costly and use up a lot of political capital, so, instead of fixing the problem those “smart people” just fix small things and hope the levee doesn’t break on their watch.

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An actual solution to what? What are you even rambling about?

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are you high or just stupid?

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I’m just not naive. The river may be stable for another 500 years or it may change course next spring. We don’t know when it will change, But it will change. We can be prepared or not.