The Flood of the Century by School of Journalism and New Media

A DEPTH REPORT BY THE MEEK SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA AT

THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI

THE

FLOOD OF THE

CENTURY

BUT WHAT IF THERE’S A BIGGER ONE OUT THERE? THE

FLOOD CENTURY 1 OF THE

CONTENTS CONTENTS SaLLy mcdonneLL BarkSdaLe honorS coLLeGe aT The

unIverSITyof mISSISSIPPI

Providing students a vibrant center of academic excellence to help them become outstanding in their fields and engaged citizens of their communities and the world

48 06 A TEMPORARY TRUCE

An overview of the greatest flood to hit the Mississippi River in the last centruy.

14 CLOSE CALL

A play-by-play account of the 2011 flood exactly as it happened from New Madrid all of the way down to New Orleans

OF THE

28 THE GREAT WALL

Where would we be without today’s levees? Underwater.

32 STEALTH WARFARE

The biggest danger to the levee may not be the water flowing over the top but the water that sneaks underneath.

34 GET UP OR GET OUT

24 THE COURAGE OF KINGS

39 THE LAST BIG ONE

Often flooded out, the residents of Kings are learning something basic: The poor get the short end of the stick.

THE

22 THE BIG ONE

Today’s levees are designed to contain the worst flood imaginable. But what if our imaginations are too small?

2 FLOOD CENTURY

Water-weary residents of beautiful Lake Ferguson have had to build higher with each flood. Can you blame them for wondering if it’s worth it?

Before 2011, there was only one Great Flood. In Greenville, they will never forget 1927. THE

FLOOD CENTURY 3 OF THE

CONTENTS

THE

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EDITOR Bill Rose

REPORTERS Benjamin Hurston Blair Jackson Blake Johnson Bracey Harris Claire Douglas Kate Kenwright Margaret Ann Morgan Mary Love Fair Peyton Thigpen

PHOTOGRAPHERS

FOUR INCHES That’s all that stood between the South Delta and a flood that

would have left a million acres under water.

BATTLE OF THE PUMPS In 2011, the battle for pumps to get rid of all-too-common

you farm.

flooding came to a bitter end.

FALSE ALARM In Southern Louisiana, Cajuns were told to expect 15 feet of water. But the water never came. Will they ever listen again?

CONTEST OF WILLS The Mississippi wants to take a hard right and bypass New Orleans. Army Engineers want to keep it where it is. The battleground is the remote Old River Control Structure.

CONCRETE CAVALRY The real saviors of 2011 were the floodways, vast areas where the river was set free to roam.

THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LEVEE They thought it was a great idea to build Vidalia’s $75 million municipal complex on the river side of the levee.

MAIN STREET The big river is also one of America’s busiest highways. THE

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THE BREACH It’s one thing to lose a levee. It’s another to lose the very dirt THE SACRIFICE FOR THE GREATER GOOD To save the levees and the town of Cairo, engineers had to flood 100 homes and 130,000 acres of prime farmland.

MEMORY HOUSE High on a Vicksburg bluff, a new museum traces the history of the corps, the river and us.

76 78

WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE CAN KILL YOU “There’s something out there we don’t know about.” BATTLE FOR NEW ORLEANS When the Corps opened Bonnet Carre’, the people of New Orleans threw a party. Can you really blame them?

THE RIVER POET The stream that sweeps 2,300 miles is a mystery to most, familiar to few and home to at least one. ON THE COVER: Photograph provided by the Associated Press

Alex McDaniel Cain Madden Jared Burleson MIkki Harris Petre Thomas Phillip Waller

ART DIRECTORS Benjamin Hurston Mikki Harris

DESIGNER Benjamin Hurston Student reporters and photographers from the Meek School of Journalism & New Media produced this depth report on flood control on the Mississippi River. Students in a spring, 2012 depth reporting class spent their spring break and countless weekends reporting from Memphis to New Orleans, analyzing how federal flood works performed in the historic 2011 Flood and what needs to be done in the future.

HOW BIG WAS IT? It carried more water than any flood in the Mississippi River’s history. It exceeded the record flow at Helena, Ark., by eight percent, at Arkansas City by six percent, at Vicksburg by 11 percent and at Natchez by 9.5 percent.

It was fueled by a snowmelt 100 to 300 percent above normal and record rainfall. April rain over the Ohio Valley was 600 to 1,000 percent above normal. In April, 10 to 20 inches of rain fell across a broad area from Arkansas to Ohio.

The flood was fed by the rare occurrence of the two main contributors to the Lower Mississippi River – the Upper Mississippi and the Ohio River – flooding at the same time. The river got so close to taking out levees that the Army Engineers had to blow up a levee and flood the Birds PointNew Madrid Floodway to lower river stages in the area. If the main levees on the river had broken, vast areas of several states could have been under water.

The flood is expected to force FEMA officials to redraw the borders of the flood plain. A new flood plain would affect homowner’s insurance and the cost of rebuilding.

The river tried to carve new channels.

BILLION

Estimated damages caused by the flood

SECONDS

Time it would take to fill the Rose Bowl with the peak flow at Vicksburg - 17 million gallons per second

6.35

Acres, in millions, inundated by the flood, compared to 16.8 million in 1927

PERCENT

Area submurged during 1927 that was protected by various flood works.

$110

BILLION

Estimated damages that were prevented by the Federal flood works

It cut deep into bends, sandbars and port property, forcing the Army Engineers to make extensive repairs.

SOURCE: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

THE

FLOOD CENTURY 5 OF THE

ESSAY

A TEMPORARY TRUCE

Perhaps the greatest flood in history rushed down the Mississippi River in 2011, and nothing got wet that wasn’t supposed to. So why do we feel so lucky? By Benjamin Hurston THE

6 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

Photo by Jared Burleson

It was the greatest flood in a century, yet when the Great Flood of 2011 came barreling down the drain we call the Mississippi River, not one levee failed, not one home protected by the levees got water, not one acre of land flooded that wasn’t designed to flood. Not one.

And it seems that just as quickly as the waters rose, America forgot. An image flashing across the television screen of the Memphis Pyramid surrounded by a smooth, chocolate mass was as close as most ever got to the water. In fact, much of the country will probably never fully realize the severity of this epic flood – a testament, surely, to the extensive flood works built and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whom Congress has charged to protect the Mississippi River Valley since 1879. But though the flood of 2011 confirmed the strength of the Corps’ defenses, it also proved just how dangerous the river can be when it attempts to shed the shackles placed on it by generations of men. As the muddy current stampeded toward New Orleans at speeds that would fill the Superdome in less than a minute, the Corps and local levee boards were forced to deploy almost every weapon in their arsenal to prevent disaster. Sand boils sprang up like hands at a Baptist revival, calling for a million sandbags to be dumped in a desperate attempt to keep the water out. At Cairo, Ill., a mammoth boil the size of an Olympic swimming pool erupted, spewing out material washed from beneath the levee at an alarming rate. It took a ring of sandbags stacked 13 feet high before the boil finally yielded. Downriver from Cairo, the Corps made the difficult decision to intentionally blow a section of levee and operate the floodway at Bird’s Point, Mo. in order to relieve pressure on the mainline system. And in Louisiana, the Bonnet Carre’ and Morganza floodways were also opened, marking the first time in history that all three major floodways have been used simultaneously.

At Lake Albemarle, north of Vicksburg, the Corps had to erect an emergency dike and berm to squelch a field of boils and repair a worrisome levee slide. The river even tried to carve a new channel at Merriwether Bend in Tennessee, getting 80 percent of the way through before it finally gave up and the waters subsided. From any standpoint, the flood fight of 2011 was a war between man and nature. Despite one heck of an effort, the river eventually ceded to the technologies of man, as it has for the last 85 years. And though many don’t realize it, the entire country has benefited from the Corps’ efforts to protect the people and the economic interests of the Mississippi River Valley, but the true victor is their system. Authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1928, the Mississippi River & Tributaries (MR&T) Project is a combination of levees, floodways, navigation channels, and storage improvements that work to keep homes dry and economies afloat. It is the single greatest civil works project in the history of the country, and the Corps will be the first to point out that in 2011, the system worked. “Nobody got wet that wasn’t supposed to get wet,” said Kelly Greenwood, Chief Engineer of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board.

“We are at higher risk today because of the flood than we were before.”

But what seems like a spectacular victory for man might be more of a temporary truce with the river. The flood of 2011 pointed out alarming weaknesses in the system that must be addressed before Mother Nature decides to strike again. The Corps identified 144 “problem spots,” levees weakened by the constant pressure of water turning their dirt walls to mush and sand boils looting their foundations from under them. Of the 144 spots, 93 were deemed critical, meaning their repair is necessary if the system is to pass another flood successfully. This spring, Maj. General John Peabody, President of the Mississippi River Commission (MRC), warned of these vulnerabilities, calling sections of levee that took a beating near Cairo and Fulton County, Kentucky “scary critical.” “We are at higher risk today because of the flood than we were before,” he said. “And until we can do all of the repairs that we need to do, which will probably take us about two years, we will be at higher risk.” And while Peabody assured that a good portion of the problem spots would be repaired in 2012, the Corps is also starting to think of more complex, long-term challenges as well. Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, former MRC president and now deputy commanding general for the Corps’ civil and emergency operations, was so impressed by the flood that he suggested it might be time to look into adding yet another floodway, essentially a relief valve to store more water in case an even bigger flood comes along. His successor, Peabody, agreed. But in an interview, Peabody raised the stakes. It may be time, he said, to rethink the whole Jadwin Plan on which the MR&T Project was based. Since the late 1920s, the Jadwin Plan has been the Corps’ Bible. But it has been drastically changed over the years as engineers learned more about the river. A reassessment now could lead to anything from tweaks to significant changes in the way the corps fights floods on the continent’s most powerful river. “Knowing what we know today, how would we redo it?” asked Peabody, seated THE

FLOOD CENTURY 7 OF THE

in his red brick headquarters high on a Vicksburg bluff overlooking the river. He paused, knowing that question holds significant political consequences. After all, the Corps is a government organization under the authority of a Congress that is finding it increasingly difficult to agree on which costs are worth adding on to the country’s ever enlarging debt. In the next breath, he admitted, “We can’t get at that no-holds-barred reexamination because political interests are concerned with what it may or may not reveal.” The nation, he said, is already asking the Corps to develop, build, and operate more infrastructure than, today, they are willing to pay for. The slumping economy isn’t helping the Corps’ already flat budgets either. Meanwhile the structures that keep water from flowing down the streets of the Lower Mississippi River Valley, built as early as the late 1920s, are getting older and more costly to maintain. “We are starting to hit a tipping point in infrastructural reliability nationwide at about THE

8 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Photo by Cain Madden

“Water will seek the path of least resistance and exploit it.” the same time as the nation is hitting the tipping point in fiscal challenges,” he said. And repairs cost money too. The $800 million the Corps received from Congress after last year’s flood, less than half of the requested $2 billion, is barely enough to address the critical spots, let alone raise the hundreds of miles of levees that remain below Project Design Flood standards. While they may have gotten the money they really needed this time around, in America’s new economic reality, when every part of the federal budget is under attack, there is no guarantee that the

Corps will continue to get the funding it needs to keep the system ready for another significant flood event. But money is not the only problem. Perhaps the greatest challenge is the very nature of the river, the will of the water to go where it wants to go. “Water will seek the path of least resistance and exploit it,” said Peabody. “It is, in my judgment, the most powerful force in nature that man comes into routine contact with.” Like a captive snake, the Mississippi river is always squirming, prodding, quietly trying to find a way out of the shackles of levees and locks to which it is confined, determined to reclaim its old stomping grounds. It nearly got out during the flood of 1973. The river scoured a deep hole under the Old River Control Structure, like a prisoner silently chiseling his way out of his cell at night. When the Corps finally realized what was happening, the river had nearly been captured by the Atchafalaya, a distributary of the Mississippi that provides a route to the Gulf of Mexico 160 miles shorter than the current path.

If it weren’t for the three massive, steel structures at Old River, which regulate 70 percent of the river’s flow past New Orleans and 30 percent down the Atchafalaya, the river would have already forsaken its marriage with Baton Rouge and New Orleans for a faster, more attractive route. Should the river ever make its escape, scientists fear that New Orleans would be surrounded by a salt marsh, its port rendered useless and its water supply compromised. It would be a major economic blow to a nation still trying to find its footing after a crippling recession. But for now, the handcuffs remain. The MR&T system has been performing largely as designed since its inception after the Great Flood of 1927, a disaster that caused over $400 million in damages and killed an estimated 240 people. It was then that the chief of engineers for the Corps at the time, Maj. Gen. Edgar Jadwin, realized that humans couldn’t out-build the river. Leaving behind the “levees only” approach, Jadwin designed the current system of floodways and tributaries to let water out and keep

For months, the flood changed the landscape. From left, the iconic old Vicksburg train depot under siege; a STOP sign ignored by the river; the river creeping near the top of the Morganza Spillway structure.

Maj. Gen. John Peabody

pressure off the mainline levee, a system to which his successors owe their success. “There is no levee that can protect against anything nature has to throw at us,” agreed Peabody. Articulately describing the 2011 flood fight with the vocabulary of an Ivy League professor, it’s obvious that Peabody is unquestionably intelligent and confident. He is proud of the system he oversees, as he should be. By the Corps’ estimates, the Mississippi River & Tributaries Project has saved the country $500 billion in damages using the relatively small investment of $14 billion since 1928. “I don’t know of any other federal program in the entire history of the United States that can say ‘we’ve returned a 34 to 1 investment THE

FLOOD CENTURY 9 OF THE

on the tax payers’ money’” he said. “That doesn’t even come close to addressing all of the positive benefits of economic activity… because we have a reliable river that can be worked on a routine basis versus that monster that Mark Twain talked about in Life on the Mississippi.”

“Ten thousand River Commissions with the mines of the world at their back, cannot tame that lawless stream, cannot curb it or confine it, cannot say to it, ‘Go here’ or ‘Go there,’ and make it obey.” -Mark Twain The world’s third greatest watershed, it is not enough to say that the Mississippi drains 41 percent of the continental United States. If the river system was a funnel, its tips would span as far west as Idaho, as far north as Canada, and as far east as New York, eventually passing all precipitation that falls in between through the tiny spout at the bottom. What starts as a trickle nearly 1500 feet above sea level at Lake Itasca in central Minnesota travels over 2,000 miles. It takes on the weight of the Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas, and Red rivers on its path to New Orleans, where it gushes into the Gulf of Mexico, satisfied at last. This is the river that man, long ago, decided to tame. Since their first run-in with the Mississippi River, men have been attempting to make its waters serve their needs. During the colonial period, the river’s wide banks served as territorial boundaries for European empires. Then cotton became king in the 1800s and the river became the highway by which Southern crops reached the rest of the world. More recently, the river has served as a loophole to anti-gambling laws, giving birth to an abundance of floating casinos, riverboats for modern-day card sharks. What was once a gurgling monster has been turned into a navigable highway, a commercial artery for the country. Think of

any oil or chemical company, and chances are, it is there on the banks, dependent on the water for operation. The river also transports 40 percent of the country’s grain, and barges travel back and forth like ants marching, carrying loads much larger than would seem possible. Judging from a history book, one could be forgiven for thinking that man actually did find a way to tame the river. But the great Mississippi isn’t one to surrender, and if you talk to the men who have fought it, the ones who know what it has done, what it can do, they tell a different story. “It does what it wants to. You can’t confine it,” said Robert Simrall, chief of water control for the Corps’ Vicksburg District. And perhaps the greatest demonstration of the river’s power is the evolution of the Corps’ own terminology as it has become increasingly acquainted with its persistence. An early promotional video claiming to have “shackled” the river strikes a stark contrast to one made after the 2011 flood, which states that the Corps “never claimed to tame the Mississippi River.” Even the longused phrase “flood control” has been reduced to the less ambitious “flood risk management.” And these aren’t changes due to modesty. Experience has tempered confidence. “When you think you’ve controlled nature, that’s the height of hubris,” admitted Peabody. “When you fight the river, you are going to lose.” In the end, the struggle to contain the Mississippi River hangs on a delicate balance – a balance between the height of levees and the storage of floodways, between the cost of protection and the need to save, between the confidence of man and respect for the river. And while the Corps would, no doubt, appreciate the nation’s concentration on the war they are fighting, they can rest knowing that at least for now, going unnoticed is a sign that they are still in the battle. n

“When you think you’ve controlled nature, that’s the height of hubris.”

The vast, now-serene spillway filled with churning water when the Morganza structure was opened for only the second time in its history. THE

10 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

Photo by Jared Burleson

THE

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THE

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A RECORD-BREAKING FLOOD

In 2011, the Mississippi River broke or nearly broke record river stages set in 1927 and 1937. Below, records are marked with color and flood stage is the level at which the river climbs out of its banks. CITY

CREST DATE

Cairo, IL New Madrid, MO Caruthersville, MO Memphis, TN Helena, AR Arkansas City, AR Greenville, MS Vicksburg, MS Natchez, MS New Orleans

CREST (IN FEET) PREVIOUS RECORD FLOOD STAGE

May 2 May 6 May 7 May 10 May 12 May 16 May 17 May 19 May 19 May 18

61.72 48.35 47.61 47.87 56.59 53.14 64.22 57.1 61.95 17.0

59.51 in 1937 47.97 in 1937 46.00 in 1937 48.7 in 1937 60.21 in 1937 59.2 in 1927 65.4 in 1927 (est.) 56.2 in 1927 58.04 in 1937 21.27 in 1922

40 34 32 34 41 37 48 43 48 17.1

MORE WATER THAN EVER BEFORE

The river carried more water in 2011 than in any previous flood. This chart tracks peak flows in major floods and how close they came to the project design flood. Flows are expressed in millions of cubic feet per second. CITY

2011

1927

1937

1973

Cairo, IL Memphis, TN Helena, AR Arkansas City, AR Vicksburg, MS Natchez, MS New Orleans, LA

2,100 2,213 2,130 2,400 2,320 2,260 1,230

1,626 N/A 1,756 1,712 1,806 N/A 1,360

2,010 2,000 1,968 2,159 2,060 2,046 1,342

1,586 1,633 1,627 1,879 1,962 2,024 1,248

Project Design Flood

2,360 2,410 2,490 2,890 2,710 2,720 1,250

Note: It is impossible to be precise about how much water the 1927 flood carried because levees broke in so many locations. Source: U.S. Corps of Engineers, Mississippi Levee Board

Photo by Alex McDaniel

At the peak of the flooding, floodwaters forced the closure of busy U.S. 61 north of Vicksburg. THE

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THE

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A RE-CREATION

CLOSECALL A blow-by-blow re-creation of the flood shows just how hard it was to hold back the river. By Peyton Thigpen

Photo by Petre Thomas

On the Vicksburg floodwall, high-water marks from past floods are recorded. This is a town with a long history of flooding.

UP IN THE OHIO RIVER VALLEY, it was stacking up to be the wettest April in history. Down in Vicksburg, “it was Good Friday and we were sitting here fixin’ to go home for Easter. Lots of folks were on vacation already,” said Kent Parrish, senior project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Parrish, along with everyone else at the Corps offices, knew there had been some extra rainfall that spring. But he had no idea exactly how much water was coming their way. On April 22, 2011, one of the hydrology experts stopped by. “We’ve got a flood briefing this afternoon. You probably need to come to it.” And that was it. Parrish entered the room where everyone was sitting around a speaker-phone -- he called it “the starship” -- listening in on a conference call with the National Weather Service. The weather man got right to the point. On May 13, just three short weeks out, the Mississippi River was expected to surge to 53.5 feet – 10.5 feet above flood stage -- on the Vicksburg gage. THE

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“Well, we sort of all just rocked back and had a few adjectives that I can’t speak right now about what was fixing to happen,” Parrish said. This would be more water than the federal levee system had dealt with since it was built in the late 1920s. The Vicksburg District immediately mobilized labor crews. Backhoes. Dump trucks. Dozers. Everyone worked diligently through the weekend and the entire next week because they knew there were some problems along the levee that needed extra attention if they planned on surviving this thing. On May 2, Parrish sat in the same room, on another call with the National Weather Service. Now they were telling him it had rained all week in the Ohio Valley – 600 percent more than normal -- and that he could expect four more feet of water than initially predicted. “All the work everybody had done for the previous week was all for naught,” Parrish said. “We had to sit down and start making new

maps, and giving new explanations. We had to call everybody. I had to call the mayor of Vidalia, La. and say, ‘Mayor, we got another four feet of water coming.’” But in the back of Parrish’s mind, he was thinking about a remote site north of Vicksburg called Buck Chute. He knew it could be a problem. By April 25, the river was already climbing alarmingly high on the levees near Cairo, Ill. Crews in Memphis began loading explosives on barges. The volatile mix would be needed if the river kept climbing and the Corps was forced to open the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway – 130,000 acres of prime farmland designed to be flooded in extreme emergencies to take pressure off the mainline levee. This was quickly stacking up to be an emergency. By the next day, the river had risen another two feet. Maj. Gen. Michael Walsh, president of the Mississippi River Commission, ordered the barges to move out. As they headed upstream, a

Coast Guard cutter, deck guns bristling, pulled alongside. The barges carried 192 barrels of aluminum powder, six 2,500-gallon tanks of liquid blasting agent, two mix pump units and two forklifts. This was what it was going to take to save Cairo. The National Weather Service had predicted a crest of 61 feet at Cairo on May 3. Before that day arrived, the Corps would need to be fully prepared to activate the floodway. As the rain kept falling, the pressure on the levees continued to grow. On April 28, Thomas Morgan, an engineer from the Memphis District in charge of the Cairo flood fight, was showing Col. Vernie L. Reichling Jr., the district engineer, and Malcolm Gay, a New York Times reporter, around the area, attempting to explain the enormous pressure building on the system. As Corps historian Charles Camillo recounted in Divine Providence, his finely detailed history of the flood, Morgan noticed a small sand boil. It quickly developed into

“Well, we sort of all just rocked back and had a few adjectives that I can’t speak right now about what was fixing to happen.”

several other sand boils and these eventually merged into the largest one that experienced flood fighters had ever seen. The mammoth boil would ultimately require a ring of sandbags 13 feet high. And still it pumped soil from beneath the levee. By the morning of May 1, the pressure to open up the floodway was intense. Col. Reichling was briefing Gen. Walsh, Sam Angel, a longtime member of the Misssissippi River Commission, and R.D. James, another veteran member who happened to own land in the floodway and knew most of the farmers there. Reichling was concerned about the levees. He warned that it was no longer “if ” the floodway would be used but “when.” Later that day, after another briefing full of dire news, Gen. Walsh had had enough. He told his men to load the explosives. Camillo’s book describes what happened next. As rain continued to fall, the forecast was raised to 63 feet on the Cairo gage early the THE

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But as camera crews and correspondents got to Memphis, they found little to excite them. Memphis was going to be safe, having been built high up on the Chickasaw Bluffs. So the crews shot video footage of Mud Island, which sits in the river, going under water. Some crews shot footage along Front Street, where the water was high, but never endangering downtown. However, just across the river, in flatter, lower Arkansas, the flood would be felt much more severely. Highways 67/167 and Interstate 40 were closed for days because of backwater flooding and low-lying subdivisions on both sides of the river got wet. As the crest of 47.8 feet, just short of the 1937 record, passed Memphis, a brave river guide, John Ruskey, and author Hodding Carter IV, hopped aboard canoes. Their harrowing ride on the raging river would continue to just north of Vicksburg, where they got out safely. It was like riding white water rapids for two solid days. As the crest headed for Vicksburg, it picked up more water when it was joined by the flow of the St. Francis, White and Arkansas rivers. The flood between Memphis and Vicksburg would carry more water than any other stretch of the Mississippi. The water continued to move south into the Vicksburg district. From that first pre-Easter forecast, Kent Parrish knew that Buck Chute near Eagle Lake was going to be a problem. The levee there was located right on top of an old river channel and it was so prone to sand boils that the Corps had already been planning to beef up its defenses. But not this soon. As it stood, Buck Chute was the weakest link in the levee system, the one spot that would not be able to handle the pressure of the immense volume of water coming down the river. If the levee at Buck Chute failed, 3,000 homes and roughly 1,450 square miles of land, an area almost seven times as large as the Birds PointNew Madrid floodway, would be inundated with water. A volume of 2.32 million cubic feet of water per second (enough to fill 29 Olympicsized swimming pools every second) would soon rush right past Buck Chute. The Corps had to act fast.

The Levee Board and the Corps called in every favor they could and by April 23, just one day after Parrish received news of the coming water, work had begun. Crews worked around the clock for five days. They built a small dike around the two acres of sand boils and covered them with a blanket of sand three feet thick. Then another two feet of clay. Then they filled the whole area inside the dike with water. Then they let adjacent Eagle Lake fill up with so much extra water – 13 feet -- that its weight would help counteract the sand boils. By April 28, when the stage on the Vicksburg gage was just 41 feet, the Corps and the Levee Board felt confident that Buck Chute could handle the coming flood. “Had this not been done,” said Peter Nimrod, chief engineer of the Mississippi Levee Board, “we might have lost that mainline levee down there, which would have been a tragedy.” Meanwhile, trouble was brewing elsewhere in the South Delta. “The Yazoo Backwater levee,” completed in 1978, “was the biggest success story of this whole thing,” said Hank Burdine, who won his levee board race only nine months before the flood fight began. He may be right. The forecast showed that the swollen Mississippi, backing up into the Yazoo River channel, would overtop the South Delta’s backwater protection levee by more than a foot. For ten days. Nimrod was worried that that much water flowing over the earthen embankment for that long would erode the levee and cause it to collapse. The Army Engineers realized that if that happened, virtually the entire South Delta – 1.2 million acres -- would be under water. Everything from Vicksburg to Hollandale. Now the Corps and the Levee Board had to warn the populace. Kent Parrish, Peter Nimrod and several others drove to Rolling Fork. They arrived at the National Guard armory to a packed house. At least 1,500 anxious people filled the sweltering armory. As they were about to enter, a man stopped Burdine, pointed at the levee board monogram on his shirt and said, “Boy, I got some duct tape

“Here comes the posse, and they’ve got green-striped britches on.”

Photo by Cain Madden

In unprotected areas around St. Francisville, La., the river gobbled up entire neighborhoods.

following morning. At the news, R.D. James held his head in his hands. In a driving rain, slipping and sliding in the mud, men pumped the explosive slurry into holes in the levee. Around 10 p.m. on the night of May 2, Corps officials and landowners alike sat glued to THE

16 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

shortwave radios. Finally, they heard, “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!” The light of the explosion reached them in the night before the boom. The earth shook. Windows rattled for miles. Nearly 400,000 cubic feet of water every second ultimately rushed through the gaping

hole in the levee. In the first hour following the explosion, the river dropped six inches. Over the next three days, it would drop four feet. By sacrificing 130,000 acres and the homes of 300 people, the Corps had managed to save roughly 3 million acres by some estimates, and the town of Cairo, Ill.

As the crest moved away from Cairo, the national media, energized by the blowing of the levee, rushed to what it perceived to be the next major battle – Memphis. The press loves a good disaster and this was shaping up to be the biggest thing on the Mississippi since the infamous 1927 flood.

THE

FLOOD CENTURY 17 OF THE

in my truck right there. You better cover that up.” thought to himself, “Here comes the posse, and the men arrived, they determined the boil had They could feel the tension as soon as they they got green-striped britches on.” already moved 100 cubic yards of sediment. As walked in. But as the meeting began, their fears They worked tirelessly through the night and Burdine put it, “that’s five tractor trailer loads”. subsided. These people just wanted to know by 5:30 the next morning everyone believed That’s a lot of dirt and sand that was no longer what to do. They were scared. the problem was fixed. As they lay on the levee supporting the levee. Something had to be done. So Parrish, Nimrod and Robert Simrall, the admiring their work, their sweat hardly having Quickly. Corps’ chief of water control, spelled it out. They had time to dry, they heard a rushing “whoosh” Once again, the levee board brought in county told them they needed to be prepared to evacuate sound. The sandbag ring had failed. jail inmates to help in the construction of sand if the levee should overtop. They told them there They devised a new plan. They sent for giant bag rings while Gov. Haley Barbour quietly lined was a possibility that the levee would not hold seed bags from a supplier in Cleveland. The up buses as a contingency should evacuation be up, that once it overtopped, the erosion could inmates started filling them with sand and placed necessary. With the experience from Francis to happen so quickly that it would leave a gash these super-sized sandbags around the boil. Then draw from, the project at Winterville was quickly in the levee, flooding the finished. Greenville, which flat, low-lying region with by Camillo’s estimate would millions upon millions of have been inundated in less gallons of water. than six hours if the levee But they had a plan. They had failed, was safe. told the audience they were Meanwhile, back in going to “armor” the levee Greenville, the levee board with miles of thick plastic carefully watched the water sheeting, the same stuff used inch higher. At 2 p.m. May to line sanitary landfills. The 13, the river was at 64.13 on idea was to prevent erosion the Greenville gage. Then, when water rolled over the inexplicably, it fell almost six top. That would only flood inches in six hours. The flood about 200,000 acres. Almost crest was still four days away. immediately, the Corps got Such a drastic drop could to work laying four miles of mean only one thing: A levee plastic on the landside of the had broken. All that water levee. One hundred workers had to be going somewhere. began the laborious task on Nimrod frantically called May 7. Four days later, they his crews, trying to find were done. out if a levee had broken Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Then they waited. somewhere in his district. The ground shook, dirt flew and windows rattled for miles as Army Ten days later, the water Nothing. He called friends Engineers blew the Birds Point-New Madrid levee. slowly crept to within four on the Arkansas side. inches of the top of the levee. Nothing. By the following And stopped. The Yazoo day, the mystery was solved. Backwater area was safe, by an extraordinarily they dropped sand and a coarse gravel aggregate At Wilson’s Point near Lake Providence, La., thin margin. into the boil to filter the water and try to trap an old levee, formerly part of the federal levee But the flood was not through with the the sediment. It worked. The muddy, silt-laden system and maintained by farmers for years, had Mississippi Delta. water in the boil turned clear, meaning it was no collapsed. The rushing water dug a monstrous On May 9, at about 5:30 p.m., Nimrod got longer carrying material from underneath the crevasse in the levee 900 feet wide. The river a call from Bobby Thompson, his assistant who levee. The levee at Francis was safe. rushed through, flooding 12,000 acres of prime was checking on a sand boil near Francis, in the Downstream, more trouble lurked. farmland and leaving it useless. The angry current extreme northern end of Bolivar County. On May 12, the Corps’ Lanny Barfield had dug an 80 foot-deep crater on the landside of the “We’ve got a serious problem,” Thompson finished his rounds and was about ready to go levee, serving notice of what could happen if an told him. “We can’t leave this until morning.” back to Vicksburg. While driving, he received actual mainline levee were to break. Nimrod arrived from Greenville an hour later a phone call to go meet assistant levee board On May 16, just north of Buck Chute at to one of the most powerful boils he’d ever seen. engineer Bobby Thompson to check on a sand Albermarle, a levee inspector noticed several Nimrod contacted Bolivar County Sheriff Mack boil near Winterville, just north of Greenville. sand boils near the landside toe of the levee. Peter Grimmett and asked for help. Thompson wanted to get Barfield’s advice on Nimrod arrived first. He saw the boils and called Burdine saw the deputies arrive first. They the urgency of the situation. Neither man knew Barfield. Then he spotted a levee slide just below the boils. The sight terrified Burdine. all had shotguns and they were followed by vans what they were in for. After closely inspecting the boils and the full of inmates from the county farm. Burdine The Corps’ Camillo reported that when THE

18 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

slide, they realized the situation wasn’t as urgent as they first thought. Nonetheless, a levee failure there would be cataclysmic. Trucks of sand were summoned. A convoy rolled down highways and rural roads through the Delta night. By the next day, a rock dike had been built around the problem area and filled with sand. Two days later the crest roared past Vicksburg. It reached 57.1 feet on the gage and passed 2.272 million cubic feet of water per second, both of these figures surpassing anything Vicksburg had dealt with previously. But this old Civil War fortress, like Memphis, had been built high up on the loess bluffs, putting most of its residents out of danger. Backwater, however, invaded lowlying neighborhoods like Kings and Fords, where it got plenty miserable. Meanwhile, at Vidalia, La., precautions were being taken, thanks to Parrish’s call to Mayor Hyram Copeland. The town’s proud new riverfront complex needed to be fortified. It had a great looking convention center, an orthopedic hospital, a hotel, a riverwalk. There was only one problem. They built it all on the wrong side of the levee. They never expected that the river would ever get high enough to give them any trouble. But the river was swiftly rising. It was going to give them trouble. A sandbag barrier covered with plastic sheeting was built 8 feet high around the buildings. Pumps were installed to get rid of any seep water that made it through the barrier. As many before them, the people of Vidalia did all they could, then waited. On May 19 the flood’s crest would pass at a record 61.9 feet on the Natchez gage, just across the river. Miraculously, Vidalia’s riverfront complex remained dry within its barriered islands. Now the river’s crest, which Barbour compared to a pig in a python, was headed for New Orleans. There was no way the Big Easy could handle the amount of water coming its way. The Corps was going to have to use its big flood control structures, the guardians of New Orleans -- Bonnet Carre’, Morganza, and Old River. They would be counted on to take some pressure off of the levees along the vital Baton Rouge-to-New Orleans corridor. This knowledge set the Internet on fire with bloggers predicting trouble with the Old River control structure, designed to bleed off 30 percent – but only 30 percent – of the flow of the Mississippi and send it down the Atchafalaya. The problem was that in the last so-called great flood in 1973, the defenses at Old

Photos by The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Above: The flood hit a record of 57.1 feet on the Vicksburg gage. Below: Explosive slurry was pumped into holes like this to blow the levee at Birds Point-New Madrid. THE

FLOOD CENTURY 19 OF THE

IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE With a few more drops of water, the flood of 2011 could have been significantly worse. A drought in the Mississippi Delta and Atchafalaya Basin kept water levels lower. Because the Mississippi River was backing up into the Yazoo River, the Steele Bayou Drainage Structure at the bottom of the Delta was closed for 55 days, meaning no water could drain. Providentially, there was no rain during those 55 days. A similar thing happened in the Atchafalaya, greatly reducing the impact of opening the Morganza Floodway. A channel straightening program after the 1927 flood cut off 15 long, tortured bends in the Mississippi, shortening the river by 170 miles and sending water to the Gulf faster. The cutoffs – which amounted to carving straight channels through S curves, reduced river stages along the Delta by six feet or more. The old Brunswick spur levee unexpectedly blunted some of the force of the river’s flow along the South Delta backwater levee and reduced the elevation of water against that levee just enough to keep it from overtopping, which could have flooded anywhere from 200,000 to 1.2 million more acres. The water stopped four inches from the top of the levee. The river tried to carve new channels by cutting shortcuts through bends and shaving off parts of islands. It might have succeeded if the flood had not ended when it did. If it had succeeded, it would have left ports high and dry, ruined decades of river engineering by the Army Engineers and left the river unfit for barge traffic. Until the Army Engineers blew a levee to divert water into the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, levees near Cairo, Ill., Fulton County, Kentucky and other locations on the Upper Mississippi River were threatening to buckle under the pressure. If the engineers had not opened the floodway, the river might have forced catastrophic levee failures in several locations, flooding millions of acres in several states.

THE

20 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

River very nearly failed. A 67-foot wing wall collapsed and when it did, the Corps discovered that the current had been waging a stealth attack on the base of the concrete and steel structure. The wicked river had dug vast, deep holes that threatened to undermine the weakened structure. If the river got through here, the consequences could be devastating. The Atchafalaya could capture the entire Mississippi. The Port of New Orleans, which handles 18 percent of the nation’s waterborne commerce, would be a port no more. But since that near disaster, the Corps had increased its defenses by building a huge auxiliary structure. Still, the defenses had never been tested by a flood this powerful. Nothing had. Everyone waited to see how it would fare. Old River performed magnificently. At the crest, it diverted 671,000 cubic feet per second with only minimal scouring. But even this was not enough to save New Orleans. Twelve miles west of the city, the Corps went ahead and opened Bonnet Carre’. A festive crowd gathered to watch workers open 330 of the structure’s 350 bays. A total of 316,000 cubic feet per second gushed through en route to Lake Pontchartain, taking immense pressure off the New Orleans levees, which were never designed to handle much more than 1.25 million cubic feet of water per second. But still, not enough water had been diverted to ensure that New Orleans would be safe. New Orleans had one last defender. There was one more flood control structure just south of Old River. But what a structure. The enormous Morganza spillway, capable of diverting 600,000 cubic feet of water per second, needed to be prepared to open at a moment’s notice. But even this proved more difficult than initially expected. As Gen. Walsh and Corps officials checked on the structure before giving the command to open it, the river was already creeping up toward the top of the gates. At times, winddriven waves were spilling into the closed bays. The decision was made to go ahead and hook up the heavy duty cranes to the first two bays as doing so might be difficult if not impossible if water were to begin rushing over the top. Workers might not be able to see well enough to hook up the crane to each gate.

Photo by The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The Corps was forced to open the Morganza Floodway to protect New Orleans, flooding vast parts of rural Louisiana.

Finally, on May 14, Walsh gave the order to open Morganza. The Corps opened 31 of the structure’s 125 bays, which would eventually divert 182,000 cubic feet of water per second. Fortunately, the opening went smoothly. Aerial video of water pouring through the bays showed up on newscasts across the nation. New Orleans was safe.

America had dodged a bullet. The 2011 flood eclipsed the great flood of 1927. It had set new records on the Vicksburg and Natchez gages as well as Cairo, New Madrid, Caruthersville and Red River Landing. It carried more water than the ’27 flood. And it left the system battered, needing more than $1 billion in repairs to get back in shape for the

next big one. The Corps crowed about how well the flood was handled, because it was handled well. But if you listened carefully, you would have noticed that its crowing was tempered with respect. The Corps has been battling the river for a long time. It knows better than anyone else that the river is not through. In

the words of Kent Parrish, “The good Lord can always send something bigger.” n Editor’s Note: This story is based on numerous documents, interviews with Army Corps of Engineers and Levee Board officials and Corps historian Charles Camillo’s history of the 2011 Flood, Divine Providence. THE

FLOOD CENTURY 21 OF THE

THE

22 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

vice after the disastrous flood of 1927, which killed more than 240 people from Cairo, Ill., to New Orleans and left about 700,000 displaced.

“In my opinion, we have to imagine a much bigger flood.”

After Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1928 to protect the nation from more disasters, the corps needed a standard on which to base the level of protection needed. Only by gauging the possible strength of the enemy could the corps be prepared to fight. The weather service took part in a puzzle game, mixing and matching past storms that produced prodigious rains over the Mississippi and Ohio river basins until the pieces fit to produce massive floods. Always the type to err on the side of caution, the corps analyzed the model with the greatest probability of producing the most severe flood and determined the corresponding flows at points along the river.

MISSISSIPPI RIVER

540,000

ARKANSAS CITY

IVE

620,000 600,000

LOWER ATCHAFALAYA FLOODWAY

0 ,00

,00 0 TEN

RIV

MEMPHIS

GREENVILLE

25,00 VICKSBURG

NATCHEZ

MORGANZA FLOODWAY MORGAN CITY

2,25

490

OLD RIVER

250,000

RIVE

0,00

CAIRO

HELENA

400,000

below the height needed to hold back such a flood. But the corps is a government agency, constrained by the federal budget. Lately, it has been able to raise only about four miles a year. At that pace, it will take nearly 30 years to get the job done. But even if Congress gave the corps the estimated $2 billion needed to bring the system up to PDF standards, the question remains: Is the project design flood really the biggest flood we might see? “That’s the $64,000 question,” said Maj. Gen. John Peabody, president of the Mississippi River Commission. “In my opinion, we have to imagine a much bigger flood. There is always something else nature can throw at us.” n

OHIO

MISSISSIPPI RIVER

NEW MADRID

WEST ATCHAFALAYA FLOODWAY

550,000

2,410,000

This schematic shows the various peak discharges that would create the mythical Project Flood the system is designed to contain.

240,000

NEW MADRID FLOODWAY

1,500,000

THREE SIMPLE WORDS demand nearly as much reverence from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as God himself, inspire as much alarm as the assassination of a president, and require as swift a response as that needed to stop a spreading wildfire. Project design flood. This is the Big One, the flood for which corps officials have spent the last 84 years preparing, the one they built their system to control, the one they pray never comes. Designated as the “maximum probable” discharge of the Mississippi River, the hypothetical flood was developed by the corps in collaboration with the National Weather Ser-

ST. LOUIS

MISSOURI RIVER

O YAZO

RIVER

BONNET CARRE SPILLWAY

BATON ROUGE

250,000

1,250,000

By Benjamin Hurston

100,000

2,890,000

Today’s levees are designed to contain the worst flood imaginable. But what if our imaginations are too small?

PROJECT DESIGN FLOOD

Corps officials follow a script that tells them precisely when to open floodways, submerge backwater areas, and even blow up levees in an attempt to save the integrity of the system and the people they’ve been charged to protect. As water levels and flows reach specified limits, the plan is executed. “It’s not happenstance. We have everything written down,” said Kent Parrish, senior project manager in the corps’ Vicksburg District. “We have to save the system.” But design alone may not be enough to protect the people, the land and the economy of the lower Mississippi River basin should Mother Nature unleash her “maximum probable” fury anytime soon. Corps officials estimate that about 120 miles of levees are 150,000

The result was a colossal flood based on three separate, historic storm events that occur within the same week, producing a maximum discharge of nearly 3 million cubic feet of water per second, enough to fill 33 Olympic swimming pools each second. This so-called project design flood, or PDF, would be the corps’ foe, and whatever system it engineered would have to be able to bear the flood’s wrath. Following a command from Congress, the corps designed a system of levees, channel maintenance, floodways and tributary improvements to control a discharge of PDF magnitude, safely passing the enormous volume of water down the river, past New Orleans and into the Gulf of Mexico. This system is based on strict procedure.

1,200,000 ATCHAFALAYA RIVER

THE PROJECT FLOOD

NEW ORLEANS

LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN

GULF OF MEXICO Graphic by Benjamin Hurston THE

FLOOD CENTURY 23 OF THE

VICKSBURG, MS

THE COURAGE OF KINGS

Often flooded out, the residents of Kings are learning something basic: The poor get the short end of the stick. By Bracey Harris

Photo by Mikki Harris THE

24 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

JUDITH STAMPLEY, 73, stands over her piano, fingers poised. A petite woman, barely reaching 5 feet, she places her cinnamon-colored fingers down with purpose. Suddenly, the brown, faded keys fill the air with sounds of an instrument that is in need of a fine-tuning. After all, wood was never meant to mix with water. And in the summer of 2011, in the little community of Kings, there was a lot of water. The Mississippi River crested at a record 57.1 feet on the Vicksburg gage. Kings had no levee to hide behind, and the river put 4 feet of water in Stampley’s house. She was fortunate. Water at even higher levels – 6, 7, 8 feet – sat in the homes of her neighbors for two months. When it finally receded, it left behind muddy floors and moldy walls. Some residents were forced to leave, told that they’d been bailed out too many times before and would no longer receive government assistance. Many did not have flood insurance since it would be too costly to raise their homes higher off the ground to meet the requirement that residences be higher than the 100-year flood. This heavily black community lies at the exposed northern end of this old Civil War citadel, where ghosts from the siege of Vicksburg still haunt the bluffs towering high above. Many of the residents are descendants of former slaves who once farmed land on Kings Point Island, a 30,000-acre island connected by ferry to the mainland. Now the land, which once held fields of cotton, corn and beans, is used mostly for timber and recreational hunting camps. The Mississippi River has the power to enrich, the soil it deposited on the Delta rivaling that of the Nile. It also has the power to take away. Over the years, the river has returned again and again to taunt the steadfast souls who insist on staying in Kings. When 2011 struck, many families were still

recovering from the flood of 2008. But Stampley had never seen a flood like this one. Backwater floods are a slow, continuous process. They come not by tidal wave but inch by inch. The Mississippi would begin seeping into Kings in early May and continue for six to eight weeks. The water grew so high that residents stopped mourning the possessions they lost and started rejoicing over the items they saved. The flood may have cost Stampley near-

talking about an old friend. How it managed to survive is a mystery. One can easily spot the waterline, rotted wood and a few slightly warped keys, damage from soaking in water for weeks. In late April and early May, Stampley was having “a grand old time” on a cruise to Jamaica, blissfully unaware that the governor had held a news conference back home warning of the impending flood. She returned to find the Mississippi River in her yard. “I was like, don’t you all have TVs or news on the ship?” says Jackie Neal, her daughter. “I could cruise in my own yard,” says Stampley, reflecting back to when she saw her waterlogged home. “My mother’s the strongest woman I know, and it was tough,” says Neal, 44. Although several Kings residents left the state to escape the rising water, Stampley didn’t go far. Her temporary residence was footsteps from her home. Her sister, fortunate enough to live on higher ground, took her in. Every day Stampley would go out to greet the water and check on her piano. She’d inch as close to the water as she dared, and stand there and stare and stare as if willpower alone could send the water away. “Mama, where are you going? You go any further and you’ll be swimming,” Neal would say. It wasn’t easy staying so near Photo by Phillip Waller and yet so far. As for staying with her sister, well, sometimes that Left: Before 2011, these steps led to a home. wasn’t easy either. Now, they lead nowhere. Above: Judith “These women hadn’t lived Stampley, 73, returned from a Caribbean cruise to find the river in her yard. with each other since they were 16 years old,” Neal says. “The honeymoon was over after month number one.” Stampley refuses to concede that it was ly $30,000 in damage to her home, but she still has her piano. The beloved instrument tough. She looks at the flood as something is the first thing she mentions when talking that simply had to be dealt with. Seeing her about the flood of 2011. She got it when she house and beloved piano slipping further unwas 12 and has played it for more than 59 derwater day after day, well, there was nothing years. When she speaks of it, it’s as if she’s that could be done about it. THE

FLOOD CENTURY 25 OF THE

Photo by Petre Thomas

Long after the storm, sandbags still lined a carport cluttered with belongings.

Parts of Kings had flooded before, but this was the first time water had gotten into Stampley’s house. The flood of 1973 came closest, reaching her backyard fence. Some of her neighbors get water almost every year. Which raises the question: Why on earth does anyone live here? For Stampley, the answer is simple: It’s her land. “This is my land and my mother’s and grandmother’s land,” she explains. Many residents of Kings echo that sentiment, especially the elderly. They have sunk their roots deep into this black soil. The pride at how newly freed slaves – their ancestors – carved out a niche for themselves still lingers. There is a reluctance to leave this haven. To simply walk away is to leave behind history. And there is another matter: Most do not have the resources to move. “Ain’t nobody going to give you much credit when you’re 78,” says Bertha Carson, who recently finished fixing up her house. THE

26 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

“If it comes back again, I guess I won’t come back no more. I guess I’ll have to go to higher ground.” She’s here for the long haul. Others like Joseph Potts, 81, say that if the next big one comes, they’ll finally leave. “If it comes back again, I guess I won’t come back no more. I guess I’ll have to go to higher ground,” Potts says.

Vicksburg Mayor Paul Winfield refers to Kings as “an area often neglected and left out.” “Kings is very similar to the Mississippi Delta. Most of the people are African-Americans on fixed income, low income,” he says. Not everyone in Kings took the river’s invasion with Stampley’s grace. “We didn’t want another Katrina to occur. We tried to encourage an environment where people didn’t blow up through their frustrations,” Winfield says. He credits town hall meetings with calming tensions. The meetings allowed residents an opportunity to vent their feelings. During the flood, the Warren County Board of Supervisors ordered Kings area residents to evacuate. Except for a few brave souls near Chickasaw Landing, who preferred the rough life, residents complied. Although some left Kings for good, the majority have come back. Few have shown interest in the city’s buyout program, which could help them rebuild elsewhere. Through-

out the area, people had to make tough decisions about whether to rebuild, restart or move. “I took the money and ran,” Mark Lockwood says. Lockwood, who lived on Hartley Road just outside Kings, says he and his mother were the only ones who left his neighborhood. Like many, he has a bit of a bone to pick with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In an effort to outsmart the flood, Lockwood had raised his home in advance. Not enough. Six feet of water got in his house. The hurt and desperation can still be detected in his voice when he speaks of being turned down for money. Although he received some aid after the storm, FEMA could not pay for work done before the damage. Flood victims see FEMA as both saint and devil. They complain about red tape and slow response. They bristle at rules that require rebuilding above the 100-year flood level, a policy that would have some folks paying thousands of dollars to raise their homes. “It was like a nightmare, a slow death,” Lockwood says of the rising waters. He pauses for a moment and listens to the birds singing. The sounds were absent during the flood, the birds and other animals either dead or on higher ground. “All these happy birds were gone.” Swamps aren’t unfamiliar to Lockwood, who moved to Mississippi after retiring in Florida. His disability and lung problems would have prevented him from walking up the stairs of the elevated house for the rest of his life. He left and moved elsewhere in Vicksburg. His mother moved to Virginia. Not far from Kings, back behind the Anderson Tully lumber mill, lies the desolate area of Fords. It has flooded virually every year for as long as anyone can remember. It is a place of abandoned homes. Insulation torn, hanging beneath. Mold black, creeping above. Claude Blue, 64, stands on the side of the road, cigarette in mouth, weed eater in hand. Not much time for talking. There’s still work to be done. He says there are only four families still living in the area. His cousin Ed Summers, 76, shows their home. A sign outside warns against trespassing. The message, which may deter most unwanted visitors, stands as a solemn reminder that the Mississippi River yields to no man. n

Photos by Phillip Waller

Above: Stampley’s fingers pry music from the warped keys of her treasured piano, which somehow weathered the flood. Below: Bertha Carson renovated her home in Kings, rather than move elsewhere. She’s in for the long haul, come what may. THE

FLOOD CENTURY 27 OF THE

THE GREAT WALL Where would we be without today’s levees? Under water. By Blair Jackson

Photo by Jared Burleson THE

28 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

THE

FLOOD CENTURY 29 OF THE

THE LEVEES

After that flood, people got it. And in 2011, old fears were aroused anew as high water reached 64.2 feet on the Greenville gage. This level was higher than these newer levees -- built after 1927 -- had ever seen but still almost 11 feet from overtopping them. Had the water risen much higher, the Levee Board was ready to act. Stacked dirt called “potato ridges” could be piled along the top of the levee. Accordionshaped sand bags called Hesco baskets could be stretched out as a barrier if quick reinforcements were needed.

HOW THEY CAME TO BE

Photos by Jared Burleson

“Will the levees hold?” As the 2011 flood came thundering down the Mississippi River, this one question rang for miles throughout the valley. Memories of the 1927 flood surfaced with the rising water and tension rose as predictions grew grim. Surely this flood would not be like that one 84 years ago that tore through levees, killed hundreds and devastated millions of acres. Dread crumbled into relief as high water passed and the levees stood strong. In a flood as big or bigger than the one in 1927, not a single mainline Mississippi River levee was breached. The levees had completely contained the flood. Its strength masked by the image of a simple dirt mound, a levee is a highly engineered structure. Its slope, its height, its location and every minute detail have been carefully crafted to repel one of the most forceful rivers on earth. Dwarfing the levees THE

30 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

Writing points to where the water crested in 2011.

that failed in 1927, today’s levees are bigger, thicker and longer than the Great Wall of China.   The levees exist to defy a force that is several times more powerful than Niagara Falls. In 2011, it became a face-off between the strength of packed dirt and the cunning of pressing water as it raced downriver at a rate of more than 2 million cubic feet per second. It was a war against an enemy that Major General John Peabody, head of the Mississippi River Commission, says is the worst of all. “Water will go where water wants to go,” Peabody said. “It will seek the path of least resistance and exploit it. That’s what water does. It is probably, in my judgment, the most powerful force in nature that man comes into a routine contact with.” Rising an average of 30 feet above the surrounding land, the levees are made of hundred-year-old compacted sand and clay. Like adding more blankets to a bed on a cold night, they have been continually coated

with more dirt over the years to make them taller and stronger. Tim Graham, who works for Levee Design in the Vicksburg office of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, says this is a good thing. The material from old levees has broken down, morphed, and hardened over the years to create a solid base of earthen steel.   From an engineering perspective, the levees are intricately designed control structures, but to the average citizen, they are peaceful green hills that stretch alongside the river. A strong and defiant core is concealed by a wispy grass exterior that boys tear up and down in four wheelers and cows are led to graze. The levees have become familiar, comfortable, just another part of the land. It is easy to fall under the siren spell of their simple beauty, easy for people to forget how important they are.   “...Until there’s a flood. Then they get it,” said retired farmer Billy Percy, whose relatives led the fight against the 1927 flood in Greenville.

The levees were not always so massive. The first ones were built by farmers in the early 18th century in New Orleans. The idea then caught on. Clumsily piled mounds of dirt, sand, and tree branches could be seen winding alongside the river to protect crops. When one farmer would build his higher, the next savvy neighbor would raise his, too.    This system advanced as people began to rely on the levees for more than just crop protection. Attention shifted to the best way to use them. On one side stood supporters of the “levees only” theory. On the other, supporters of strategic outlets.   The levees only policy proposed to keep the river totally confined, walled in by levees that could be raised as needed. The idea was that squeezing the river would increase water volume which, in turn, would increase velocity. The higher velocity would then scour sediment from the bottom of the river, deepening the channel and lowering river stages.    Supporters of outlets scoffed at the scouring theory. Their idea held that a combination of levees and floodways would be the best way to control the river. Outlets, they argued, would let the river spread out, thereby lowering levels in the main channel.  The levees only theory prevailed until 1927, when the infamous flood forced its way through levees all along the river, washing

away any lingering support for that discredited philosophy. As a result, Congress stepped in to order a new system to protect the Mississippi Valley from future floods. The Corps built a series of floodways – land that can be flooded when necessary -- which were successful in lowering river stages. Several bends in the river were cut through, straightening it substantially and shortening it by 170 miles. The cut-offs greatly lowered river stages along the Lower Mississippi, but perhaps the biggest improvement was the creation of bigger levees -- taller, thicker, better built levees that would hold a giant flood if it was to come again. And it did come again. The big 1973 flood revealed that the river had lost some of its efficiency. The same amount of water was producing higher stages. The Corps discovered that 310 miles of levees needed to be raised, some by as much as 8 feet, to insure the required three feet of freeboard over the so-called Project Design Flood.    Lack of money from Congress has kept the project from completion. Right now, of the 1,610 miles of mainline levees, there are still 119 miles that need to be raised, 30 miles along the stretch of river between Clarksdale and Vicksburg and many more in Louisiana. If a super flood arrived today, these weak spots could domino the entire system into ruin unless they were raised quickly.   So the battle continues, with the Corps currently raising about 4 to 6 miles of levees a year. The process is particularly slow in Louisiana, Gen. Peabody said, because the various levee boards have to purchase rightsof-way for the project and those negotiations are slow and sometimes expensive.  But if 2011 was any indication, the river has a long way to go to conquer these earthen guardians. As Kelly Greenwood, chief engineer of the Yazoo-Mississippi Levee Board said, “These are Rolls Royce levees.” n

“Water will go where it wants to go. It will seek the path of least resistance and exploit it.”

THE LEVEES:

MASSIVE EARTHWORKS An average of about 30 feet high, though some may reach 50 feet, dwarfing the old levees. As wide as a football field is long. Bigger, taller and thicker than the Great Wall of China. Often buttressed by earthen berms that strengthen the levee’s foundation on one or both sides. Have gravel roads on their tops, or crowns, to provide better access for maintenance and flood fights. Contain hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dirt per mile. Often built on the old levees in existence during the 1927 flood. Have trenches, or ditches, at the land side toe of the levee to help handle seepage. Built to leave three feet of freeboard over the project design flood. At New Orleans, the freeboard is up to five feet. Have never been breached since their construction after the 1927 flood. Are composed of compacted dirt, sand and clay that meet corps specifications for strength and for handling moisture. Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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VICKSBURG, MS

Sandbags remain around a boil that caused trouble in 2011

STEALTH WARFARE The biggest danger to the levee may not be the water flowing over the top but the water that sneaks underneath. By Blair Jackson “PETER, PETER, GET UP HERE QUICK and bring everybody you got.” The call came at 5:30 p.m. on May 9. assistant levee board engineer Bobby Thompson and a worker for the Army Corps of Engineers had traveled to Francis, about an hour north of Greenville, for a routine check of a small sand boil someone spotted along the side of the levee. Peter Nimrod, chief engineer of the Mississippi Levee Board, arrived to find THE

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a large area of bubbling, muddy water surrounded by sandbags to keep it in place. After four hours of work, a content crew sat down only to hear the sickening sound of rushing water. Whoosh. The entire thing blew out. By this point, it was 2 in the morning. The levee board workers called the Bolivar County sheriff, who sent 25 inmates. Soon, contractors arrived with truckloads of sand. Through a quick spotting and prompt action,

through weak layers of sand in and below the levee. It travels unnoticed, soaking the soil, weaving through the rocks and popping up on the land side. Seepage is not necessarily bad. If the water that bubbles up on the land side is clear, all is well. Cloudy water, however, is an instant sign of trouble. If there is any dirt, clay, silt, anything in the water, that means it is picking up sediment on its way through the core of the levee. The more material, the greater the concern. If not stopped, it can undermine the levee and cause it to collapse. To combat this threat, engineers surround boils with sandbags piled high enough to equalize the water pressure. The weight of the water stops the flow of material. “As long as they get the water level up high enough to combat the pressure and see that it’s flowing clear water, it’s OK,” Nimrod said. It’s all about the physics of water. If the boil is large enough, flood fighters will build a dike around it with

Photos by Petre Thomas

the levee board had suppressed the sand boil. But as the crew worked through the night, cellphones buzzed and rumors flew. People thought the levee was about to break. “By 8 o’clock the next morning, half of Bolivar County had moved away,” Nimrod joked. In a major flood, sand boils have traditionally been the biggest threat to the levees. They caused most of the levee breaks in the legendary 1927 flood. “In a flood, the real problem we have is not overtopping; it is under seepage,” Nimrod said. “Our levee will obviously hold back the water, but the water will find weak areas and pop up on the land side. The water starts actually making a hole under your levee.” As water rushes down the river channel, it presses with immense weight against the dirt and clay levees. The conniving water twists

Peter Nimrod

HOW SANDBOILS CAN THREATEN THE LEVEE 4. LEVEE FAILURE

1. FLOODWATER

3. SANDBOIL

the ends connected to the levee. This area can then be filled with water or sand, creating a temporary berm to add weight to the base of the levee. Sometimes the levee board and the corps drill relief wells to allow water to flow under the levee to relieve the pressure. Essentially, they are engineered sand boils. The Mississippi Levee Board came up with an invention to deal with the many little sand boils – known as “pin boils” – that pop up. These “redneck relief wells,” as they were jocularly dubbed, are made by cutting off the top and bottom of a 30-gallon plastic drum and shoving it on top of the sand boil. Notches are cut in the sides of it for water release. Then workers can tell at a glance if the water is muddy or clear. “It sure saves your back if you don’t have to do sandbagging,” said Mississippi Levee Board Commissioner Hank Burdine of Greenville. “Sandbagging is a hideous, tough job, very labor-intensive, and these things sure saved a lot of time for us.” n

THREATS TO LEVEES Levees are around 30 feet high, are often buttressed by earthen berms at the base, can be as wide as a football field is long, and are packed with hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dirt per mile. But they are not invulnerable. Some of the dangers: Sand boils (3) are the biggest threat. The immense pressure of the swollen river pushes water through sand strata beneath the levee (2) and it boils up on the land side like a little volcano. If the water is cloudy, the boil is eating away at the core of the levee and if not stopped can dig a big enough cavity to cause it to collapse (4). High water and strong current can eat away at the levee base. High winds or passing barges can make things worse by creating wave wash.

2. UNDERSEEPAGE Graphic provided by The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Wave wash over the top of a levee can erode it, causing a catastrophic crevasse. High water pushing against the levee for long periods can saturate and slowly weaken it, making it increasingly vulnerable to the constant pressure.

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GET UP GET OUT GREENVILLE, MS

Water-weary residents of beautiful Lake Ferguson have had to build higher with each flood. Can you blame them for wondering if it’s worth it? By Margaret Ann Morgan

Photo by Jared Burleson THE

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WHEN CLINTON PETTEIT CROSSES THE LEVEE onto Upper Lake Ferguson Road, he passes trees stripped of leaves and blooms and littered with trash and washed-up remnants of what used to be a lively, close-knit community. The epic flood of 2011 proved to be an irresistible force against the comfortable homes on Lake Ferguson.

Petteit can look up and down the gravel road and see suffering, the sort of pain that comes when people watch a home, a labor of love, destroyed. But there is something else, too – a resilient spirit typical of those who live on the wrong side of the levee and see their homes flooded, yet insist on moving back.

“It’s peaceful,” Petteit says of life on the lake. “It’s our home.” That is a recurring attitude of just about every person in the Lake Ferguson community. It is home to about 100 families on an old channel of the Mississippi just outside Greenville. But now, some of those homes sit abandoned, gutted by the flood and rotting in the Delta heat and THE

FLOOD CENTURY 35 OF THE

Photo by Jared Burleson

A year after the flood, the interior of a waterfront home is laced with mold and destruction. THE

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humidity. Most people here have fought two floods back-to-back. Some of them have even seen three. The amazing thing is, they keep coming back, flood after flood. For families like the Petteits, whose homes are built on 16-foot stilts, this is easier to do. But for some, a flood on Lake Ferguson forces a completely new life in a completely new place. Bill Beasley and his wife reluctantly fled to Arkansas after the 2011 flood, when waters took a greater toll on their lake house than they had ever seen. “We hate to leave,” Beasley says. “We had good neighbors.” He is leaving for good, placing the blame squarely on the Federal Emergency Management Agency. After trying for a year to get help from FEMA, he gave up. Calling it a “three-ring circus,” Beasley concluded that meeting the agency’s standards was not worth the hassle. “They told us we had to tear it down or raise it,” he recalls of the drawn-out conversations with FEMA. “They just want everybody to get out.” This type of situation is not uncommon among people who live on the water. The current standard on Lake Ferguson is to have homes raised as much as 16 feet off the ground, at least 3.5 feet above the 100-year flood level, a severe flood with a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year. But folks on Lake Ferguson have seen that flood too many times of late. For Petteit and his wife, Donna, meeting these standards is what saved their home in the flood of 2011. “We only got 2 inches inside the house,” Clinton says as he sits in his brightly colored living room, which leads to a back porch that overlooks the serene lake. “We brought the boat up to load our things and get them out of here.” Lake Ferguson homes go dark when the river reaches 54 feet. The power company cuts off electricity to minimize chances of electrocution. According to Peter Nimrod, chief engineer of the Board of Mississippi Levee Commissioners, one more foot is a “cause for concern.” The Mississippi River rose at a rate of about 1.5 feet each day during late April and early May, eventually reaching 64.2 feet on the Greenville gage. THE

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Photo by Phillip Waller

Bill Coppage’s home was turned into a slimy, smelly mess by the 2011 flood.

“I would rather have it burned up than go through another flood.” Inspectors rode the 60-mile stretch of levee in Washington County every day, looking for problems along the line, even though Nimrod was confident the levees would hold. The problem for Lake Ferguson residents was the abrupt warning to get their belongings out of their homes two days earlier than expected. The water was over 58 feet while homeowners packed up their last items, then scuttled off seeking shelter to brave yet another flood. “I just remember thinking, ‘When is it gonna quit?’ “ Bill Coppage says as he looks through the journal he kept during the flood. He shares some of the entries but shies away from others, whether because of the raw memories or

the accounts laced in profanities. Like many homeowners, he took extensive photographs of his house at various stages of ruin. Even today, families pull out photos of the flood and display them like family picture albums. Coppage and his wife called the Greenville Inn and Suites home while their Lake Ferguson home soaked in muddy water for more than a month. What did they do when they could not stop Mother Nature herself? “Drank,” Coppage says, laughing. “There was nothing else to do.” When they returned, after the levee opened back up on June 12, Coppage says, his whole home was covered in mud – a slimy, smelly mess. It is not a mud like that after an afternoon rain. This mud comes from the bottom of the lake and makes its way through weeds and trees, bringing along bugs, critters of the lake and any other displaced thing to stop on the walls of the home and dry in the sticky Mississippi heat. “I would rather have it burned up than go through a flood,” he says. He knows this is what he will return to after a flood. He has been through it before. Why keep fighting the power of the uncontrollable? “We have so much invested in it already,” Coppage says of his home, which after being rebuilt will meet the federal height standards in all of its beauty of pinewood, tall French doors and high, open ceilings. “We’ve made a pact. Third one and we’re out. ... If it ever reaches it, it will cut across like a knife.” More than one year after the flood, the constant buzzing of saws and banging of wood on the steel tailgates of the F-250s that sit in many front yards can be heard all across the lake. The community is rebuilding, knowing that with every stroke of the hammer against the appropriately regulated stilts, the biggest flood of them all could be right around the corner. “Why would you live anywhere else?” asks Clinton Petteit, admiring the calm of the lake from his back porch, describing the rich oranges, magentas and reds of the sunset’s reflection over the water. His smile offers a sense of peace. “When you ride over that levee, you leave everything behind.” n

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LAST

BIG ONE

Before 2011, there was only one Great Flood. In Greenville, they will never forget 1927. By Bracey Harris

Photos courtesy H.B. Nelken, Greenville Archives

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THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1927

This rare photo shows the 700 block of Washington Avenue, 1927. Greenville had turned into a Deeep South version of Venice

Backwater Blues Done Call Me To Pack My Things And Go ‘Cause My House Fell Down And I Can’t Live There No More Mmm, I Can’t Move No More Mmm, I Can’t Move No More There Ain’t No Place For A Poor Old Girl To Go --Backwater Blues, By Bessie Smith

IN AUGUST 1926, THE RAIN CAME. It was not the welcome rain that eased farmers’ fears of a drought, and cooled the earth. It was the rain that would lead to a flood that William Alexander Percy described in Lanterns on the Levee as “deep enough to drown a man, swift enough to upset a boat, and lasting enough to cancel a crop year.” In his pivotal work Rising Tide, author John Barry recounted the flood of 1927. On January 1, revelers would celebrate the New Year. From the planters’ mansions in the flat land of the Delta to the high rises of New York, partygoers defying Prohibition remained blissfully unaware that the Mississippi River had reached flood stage at Cairo -- the earliest on record. The water would continue to rise. In early February, a crevasse or levee break occurred in Arkansas. The Army Corps of Engineers would continue to assure anyone who asked that yes, the levees would hold. Down in Mississippi, Maj. John Lee, head of the corps’ Vicksburg District, would continue to keep face for the public’s sake, while preparing for battle. On April 16, the first trumpet would sound. The 1,200foot long Dorena levee in Missouri collapsed, flooding over 175,000 acres. U.S. Sen. LeRoy Percy would hold an THE

40 FLOOD CENTURY OF THE

emergency meeting in Greenville. Now was the time to act, if the badly weakened levee at Mounds Landing, a few miles to the south was to be spared. Mississippi Gov. Dennis Murphree granted a plea for prison labor. However, it was not enough. Barry describes how police begin to scour black neighborhoods for more workers. Those who refused were beaten or jailed. Wynn Davis, a black man, would drive trucks of workers to the levee. “Never saw any white people on the levee working. I only saw the people I carried up,” Davis recalled. Their misery would give rise to many of the songs known as the blues today. When one hears the mournful wail of Lonnie Johnson against the steady strumming of a guitar on Broken Levee Blues, they can feel the sorrow of those forced to stay behind. They Want Me To Work On The Levee, They’re Coming To Take Me Down. I’m Scared The Levee May Break, Ah... And I Might Drown. The Police Run Me Out From Cairo, All Through Arkansas. And They Threw Me In Jail, Behind These Cold Iron Bars. They Said, “Work, Fight Or Go To Jail.” I Said, “I Ain’t Totin’ No Sacks.” I Won’t Drown On That Levee And You Ain’t Gonna Break My Back. --Broken Levee Blues

Four days later, storms would ravage the area. The wind that had produced tornadoes bore down hard on the levees. Two workers, Bill Jones and Moses Mason, would both describe the water as “boiling.” “The levee just started shaking. You could feel it shaking. You could watch the water -- everything was wet, but it was like the water was raising dust,” Mason said. On April 20, the gauge at Cairo read 56.4.feet. The level would remain unmatched until 2011, when the river reached 57.1 feet. On the morning of April 21, the battle that Major Lee had been awaiting finally arrived. A small break appeared at 6:30 a.m. Within 30 minutes, 1,200 men, mostly black, were working at the site. Forced to sandbag at gunpoint, their efforts would prove to be futile. Mason recalled a voice warning, “Watch out! It’s gonna break!” A frantic race began to get off the levee. Above the commotion, Major A.G. Paxton would urgently warn his commander over the phone that the river could not be held off only to abruptly state, “There she goes.” Charlie Williams said it was as if the levee had “just seemed to move forward, as if 100 feet of it was pushed out by the river.” At 12:30 p.m. Lee would concede the loss in a simple telegraph to General Edgar Jadwin, the heard of the Corps of Engineers: “Levee broke at ferry landing Mounds Mississippi eight A.M. Crevasse will overflow entire Mississippi Delta.” Barry writes that “in Greenville at 8 A.M., the fire whistle and every whistle at every mill began to blow, and every church bell rang. Immediately water pressure dropped to nothing as thousands of people tried to fill their bathtubs with a supply of drinking water.” The break at Mounds Landing still remains the largest in history. Within days it would blanket nearly ten million acres with ten feet of water. But early on April 22, the day after the levee broke, the water had not yet breached the Greenville protection levee. An excerpt from Rising Tide describes the moment: “At 3:10 A.M. the fire whistles and church bells in Greenville sounded, and suddenly the streets were thick

with people running to churches, to city hall, to the courthouse, to commercial buildings, and to the only dry land left -- the river levee itself.” The flood would give rise to rescuers such as Herman Caillouet. Before his mission, Caillouet, a colorful character with a penchant for cowboy hats and boots, strolled into Jim’s Café with a request for hotcakes. Workers would stare back at him, incredulous, wondering if they had misunderstood his Cajun accent. Caillouet proceeded to cook the hotcakes himself, the river continuing to rise in the restaurant. In the span of three days, he would rescue 150 people stranded wherever their flight had taken them. However, he could not save all. Caillouet recalled his failed attempt to rescue a family of seven in a floating house that collapsed under the force of the water just as he got to them. “I searched the boards and things…and never saw a soul come up and the waves throwing that lumber over, it just covered ‘em to where they couldn’t come out from under...Seven of them...I went ‘round and ‘round, did not see a hand.” Perhaps no one needed a savior more than the African Americans of the Delta. One white preacher challenged two planters who prevented their workers from escaping on barges at gunpoint. “I come here by the God of all creation. If either of you has guts enough to pull the gun you carry please start now or get out of my way and I don’t believe either of you has the guts, he said. Most African Americans were not as fortunate. Blacks would be left on the Greenville levee as whites took for higher ground. Planters would object to them leaving, fearful that they would not return. Though the statistics vary, the Army Corps of Engineers believes that at least 246 deaths resulted from the flood. Over 700,000 people would be displaced, and more than 325,000 refugees would be left behind. It would also take its toll on the economy. Nationwide, more than a billion dollars worth of property was damaged, at the time the equivalent of one-third of the federal budget. As John Barry writes, “Things would never be the same again.” n

“The levee just started shaking. You could feel it shaking... Everything was wet, but it was like the water was raising dust.”

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ROLLING FORK, MS

FOUR INCHES

That’s all that stood between the South Delta and a flood that would have left a million acres under water. By: Kate Kenwright

Photo by Petre Thomas

Workers rush to lay sheets of plastic in an attempt prevent the levee from eroding.

IT’S NOT OFTEN that the Corps of Engineers calls an emergency meeting in this quiet farming town about an hour north of Vicksburg. So when Kent Parrish and other senior Corps officials showed up, there were already 1,500 frightened citizens jammed into the National Guard armory and hundreds of others milling around outside. Traffic was lined up along the highway as far as the eye could see. The Corps had bad news to deliver. The latest crest forecast had the Mississippi River climbing three and a half feet above the 100year flood of 54 feet on the Vicksburg gage. More to the point, it meant that more Mississippi River water would back up into the already full Yazoo River. That, in turn, would force water over the top of the Yazoo backwater levee that protects the flat, low-lying farmland of Issaquena, Sharkey and parts of Yazoo, Humphreys and Washington counties between Greenville and Vicksburg. THE

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The water was expected to overtop the backwater levee by more than a foot and flood up to 400,000 acres of that rich farmland. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“I thought it was never going to back down. And it tested those levees to the extreme.”

If the water rushing over the top eroded the levee and caused it to fail, much more water would rush through, flooding virtually the entire area from the Yazoo on the south to Hollandale on the north, including the towns of Rolling Fork and Mayersville. U.S. 61 would be under water. Everything up to 106 feet above mean sea level would be inundated. The South Delta would essentially become a million-acre swamp. But the Corps had a plan it believed would work. It would “armor” the side of the levee to prevent it from scouring. But just in case, Parrish and others urged residents to prepare evacuation plans and get ready. County officials moved important documents to the second floor of the Issaquena County Courthouse. The grim news, said Rolling Fork native and former Levee Board Commissioner Laurence Carter, was “a lot more than people expected. It didn’t cause a panic, but it sent a lot of people home packing.”

As the water crept up, 100 Corps workers labored for four days to coat four miles of levee with thick, plastic-like poly-sheeting, the same stuff used as liners in sanitary landfills. Then people waited. For days, they watched the water rise. It rose up, up, up until it was four inches from the top of the backwater levee. And then it stopped. Four inches from blue ruin. An old spur levee, it turned out, unexpectedly deflected just enough of the water to keep it from spilling over the top. Carter was more knowledgeable about the threat than most but he was amazed at the strength of the levees. “I was confident that it could stand a quick rise and a quick fall,” he said. “But this thing held on, and held on, and held on, and I thought it was never going back down. And it tested those levees to the extreme.” Schoolteacher Tona Martin, who lives along the levee in Issaquena County, recalls

the jangled nerves as the water rose and rumors flew. “People get wind of stuff and they want to make it seem worse than it is, you know. Some people were saying ‘Well they said this happened and the levee broke.’ Well if that were true you’d have levees breaking everywhere! So you had to kind of go back to the Internet and the TV and see what was really going on.” Water stayed high against the backwater levee for weeks but it developed no problems. Not even a single sand boil. And it kept 17 feet of water out of the South Delta. The levee was completed in 1978, five years after the devastating backwater flood of 1973, when a half million acres of South Delta farmland was flooded. Before the levee, flooding plagued farmers every few years. It got so bad, so commonplace that farmers began using bulldozers to dig up their land and fashion homemade ring levees to protect their homes and farm equipment. With water sitting against the homemade le-

vees as high as 10 feet for weeks, they had to keep pumps working inside to expel seep water. In case the levee broke, they kept fishing boats tied up to their homes. A whole backwater culture developed, with some residents leaving their makeshift levees up year-round and others actually landscaping them. During floods, different members of a family would stay up through the night so they could sound the alarm if water started to pour in. The embattled South Delta had been promised a backwater levee since 1941 but it didn’t get built until after the big flood of 1973 dramatized their plight. Congress had also approved, decades before, a plan to install pumps in the area to help move water off the land. Whenever the Mississippi backed up into the Yazoo, water could not drain out of the South Delta and would pond in the lower end of the region, creeping higher with every rain. The government has paid for similar pumps in other THE

FLOOD CENTURY 43 OF THE

Photo by Petre Thomas

Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Above: The flood threat “sent a lot of people home packing,” said Laurence Carter. Below: The backwater levee was inches from Blue Ruin. THE

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backwater areas along the river. But environmentalists blocked installation of the South Delta pumps and a federal appeals court dealt them a death blow earlier this year. The South Delta has always been vulnerable to flooding. In fact, if a monster flood, the so-called Project Design Flood, ever develops, this sparsely populated region is to be sacrificed to save the larger levees on the Mississippi itself. In the most severe floods, Parrish said, the backwater protection levee “is an overtopping section. We wanted the water to run over it, but we didn’t want the river to gouge through it so we have the whole river go through there.” For that reason, the backwater levee is 12 feet lower than the Mississippi River levees. The idea is to use the South Delta as a water storage area. That takes pressure off the mainline Mississippi levees, which are the Corps’ first priority. But Parrish acknowledged that all the backwater fortifications are not up to design grade. Some sections are anywhere from 6 inches to 5 feet below the desired height. But the Corps can’t raise those sections until several miles of deficient Mississippi River levees are raised. The Corps discovered after the 1973 flood that because of changes in the river, it needed to raise more than 300 miles of levees. It has been raising a few miles a year since, moving at a pace just as fast, they say, as congressional funding will allow. The people of the region view all of this somewhat fatalistically. They want to farm and this is where the land is, so they continue. Yazoo City resident Brenda Paul and her family were victims of the 2011 flood. In the midst of building a new home at a higher elevation, Paul managed to remain optimistic. “I am so crazy,” she said. “I never was upset or cried. When you farm all your life, you learn you can’t control anything. You learn to be tough, I guess. You just don’t dwell on things like that. I can’t control the flood. What am I going to do? I’m going to get my stuff and get out.” Paul’s attitude is common in these parts -- as if disaster at the hands of the elements is simply a part of life. “When you farm,” she said. “you learn you don’t control anything. God is in charge of everything.” n

ROLLING FORK, MS

Photo by Petre Thomas

Editor Ray Mosley said the pumps would help a few farmers in a sparsely-populated area.

BATTLE PUMPS OF THE

For decades, the South Delta battled for pumps to get rid of all-too-common flooding. In the year of the Big One, the battle came to a bitter end. By: Kate Kenwright

2011 BROUGHT A BITTERSWEET SPRING to the residents of the South Delta. A backwater flood that would have been the worst in the history of this water-weary region stopped four inches from the top of a protection levee, leaving their land dry and canceling fears that up to a million acres could be inundated. But on March 28, just as the Mississippi River was mustering for attack, a federal appeals court dealt farm interests in the South Delta a galling blow. The ruling meant the area had finally lost a decades-long struggle to get the federal government to install huge pumps to expel water from their low, flat land when it floods. A levee already protects the area from all

but the most severe backwater flooding from the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. But even if the levee keeps water out, the area can’t drain when the two rivers are high. Then, rainwater just backs up over the farmland and can flood hundreds of thousands of acres. Pumps

“It’s over. I can speak with authority on that one.”

capable of handling 14,000 cubic feet of water per second would help drain the land and dump the excess water over the levee into the Yazoo. The estimated construction cost was $220 million. Army engineers estimated the pumps would operate no more than 30 days of an average year. They estimated it would take about $2 million a year to operate and maintain the project. The battle for the pumps has raged since Congress promised them in 1941. Decade after decade, year after year, Congress made promises but never backed them up with money, even when other backwater areas in other states were getting pumps for similar reasons. Finally, Congress loosened its purse THE

FLOOD CENTURY 45 OF THE

strings and it looked like the Yazoo pumps would move ahead. Preliminary work began. But in 2008, under pressure from environmentalists, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the pumps on grounds that the project would damage the environment in this heavily farmed area. Citing the Clean Water Act, the EPA said it was concerned about the impact on wetlands and fish and wildlife resources, despite arguments from the Army Corps of Engineers, levee boards, Delta Council, farmers and countless Mississippi politicians that the project would actually improve the environment. It included a plan to reforest 60,000 acres of farmland in the backwater area, and farmers contended that it would improve the habitat of black bears and other wildlife. “We did everything humanly possible to address all the concerns that the EPA had with the project,” said Kent Parrish, a senior corps manager in Vicksburg. “We thought we had a clean bill of health.” To try to head off any veto or court action, the corps and levee boards held a series of meetings with the EPA and environmentalists to discuss concerns, but it was to no avail. Deer Creek Pilot Editor Ray Mosby of Rolling Fork said one of the project’s biggest problems was the huge price combined with a sparse population in the backwater area that would have been helped the most -- the southernmost part of the South Delta just north of the Yazoo River. “Most of the residences that are in the normal backwater flooding area, most of the people, they’ve died, they’ve moved, they’ve gone,” said Mosby, whose newspaper won an award for a story exploring that fact. “People are sexier than soybeans,” he said. “So they didn’t want to claim that the pumps’ greatest benefit was to agricultural row crops. But it was.” In the end, though, it was not the number of residents affected by the pumps that spelled their demise. The EPA vetoed the project based on environmental concerns — one of only 12 such vetoes since the Clean Water Act was enacted in 1972. Said Parrish of a possible appeal: “It’s over. I can speak with authority on that one.” n THE

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Photo by Alex McDaniel

Backwater from the Yazoo River left only the roofs of houses peeking up from the flood. THE

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FALSE ALARM In Southern Louisiana, Cajuns were told to expect 15 feet of water. But the water never came. Will they ever listen again? By Claire Douglas

Photo by Jared Burleson

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HENDERSON, LA

Photo by Jared Burleson

Small houseboats like this one are scattered across the South Louisiana landscape.

Photo by Jared Burleson

“There was no flood,” Karen Bierschwale said adamantly as she interlocked her fingers and set her worn hands on the table.

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Smudged black makeup lined her blue eyes. Reading glasses hung limply on the collar of her green cotton McGee’s Landing Tshirt. The shirt was tucked into a black apron that covered her khaki pants. Like so many in this swampy region, the outspoken waitress at McGee’s Landing restaurant, bar and dance hall is still biting nails about having to flee a flood that never came. This small but thriving Cajun town of 1,634 sits in the Atchafalaya Basin between the Atchafalaya River and its bigger sister, the Mississippi, about 126 miles north of New Orleans. The basin is natural swampland and has been an emergency floodway since 1954, when the Army Corps of Engineers built the Morganza Spillway. The people of Henderson and other towns inside the 40-mile-long, 4-mile-wide basin were already a natural flood risk because of

The Atchafalaya Basin is a rural region criss-crossed by rivers, creeks and bayous.

“I think he wanted to scare ’em and he did a good job. I thought they were gonna have to bring some people to the hospital.”

their proximity to the rivers, but the threat increased after the spillway was built above them. Those who own land on the unprotected side of the levee receive a letter from the U.S. government every year stating that in the case of severe high water, Morganza will be opened and they may have to evacuate their land or be engulfed by the excess water. With the worst flood in history raging, Morganza was opened on May 14, 2011, to relieve pressure from the Mississippi. The corps designed the spillway to flood the basin to save bigger cities to the south, particularly Baton Rouge and New Orleans. The spillway has been opened only twice: 1973 and 2011. It worked exactly as designed both times. Tons of water – up to 182,000 cubic feet per second this time – was diverted from the swelling rivers and pushed down the basin toward the Gulf. THE

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Fisherman Nick Luviere pontificates on the flood from the roof of his Chevy. THE

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Photo by Jared Burleson

Bierschwale was born and raised in Butte La Rose, a tiny town of 800, only 2.7 levee miles from Henderson. Butte La Rose is on the unprotected side of the levee while nearby Henderson has the levee’s promise of protection. The towns in the basin had a hard spring of 2011 not because of the flooding, but because the flood never came. “They put us through hell. I mean years ago the water used to come high, every year, and that’s what happened last year. Just high water,” she said with a raspy Cajun drawl. “We went to a meeting at the fire station and they told us to expect 15 feet above our heads, from where we were standing. So we moved all our stuff into storage lockers and trailers in Lafayette. I burned $2,000 worth of college books because I thought they would be ruined in the flood. Old closets of clothes, all kind of things. My sister and I have two trailers right next door to each other and it took us two storage lockers and three friends’ houses and then our yard didn’t even flood. Didn’t even come up over the pier, much less into our house.” Butte La Rose was prepped for the flood by Col. Ed Fleming, commander of the corps’ New Orleans District, weeks before the spillway opened. “The guy from the corps was up there speaking at this big meeting, and he’s up there being nonchalant, acting like ‘just move and put your stuff up,’ but it’s not that easy after you’ve been somewhere for 30 years to just pick up and move out. I lost so much for trying to move out and it didn’t even flood. I lost more trying not to lose.” The mayor of Henderson, Sherbin Collette, walked into McGee’s Landing, greeting the men he knew with a firm fisherman’s handshake and giving the ladies a Cajun kiss on the cheek. He has been the mayor for nine and a half years but proclaimed with a charming smirk that he “hates politics with a purple passion.” He was also at that meeting at the fire station last spring, and he had an even stronger reaction to Fleming’s announcement. “He almost killed some people in there. (Fleming) said, ‘Let me tell you something. ’Specially you people outside. Listen to me carefully. Where you are standing there will be 15 feet of water.’ I said, ‘Is he a nut? You’ve gotta be kidding me.’ I think he wanted to scare ’em and he did a good job. I thought THE

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they were gonna have to bring some people to the hospital.” With glazed eyes, Bierschwale spoke about the lasting emotional effects of that spring. “It was like losing them all over again,” she said as she recalled sorting through her late parents’ house to prepare for the water. “All their old furniture and knickknacks, and I had to box it all up and throw away what I didn’t think I could take with me. It felt like losing them all over again.” She is not alone. Ask Nick Luviere, pontificating from the roof of his muddy Chevy truck. “They were saying if the levee breaks the water is gonna be up to the airport in Lafayette. I didn’t believe it.” “The only thing that messed me up was my houseboat flipped,” he added. “And I couldn’t frog for three weeks. I clean ’em and sell ’em. The restaurants around here buy them. Three dollars apiece. I caught 72 last night. You just hit ’em on the head with a hammer. It’s kinda brutal, but it is what it is. I couldn’t frog for almost a month because (the river access) was shut down.” Many residents of this close-knit community are weary of talking about it. A sign in one front yard announces, “Don’t stop. Don’t talk. Don’t wave.” The local backlash against the corps was triggered after early flooding predictions for the basin proved to be way off. Even a year later, some of the residents try to paint the corps as a modern-day “boy who cried wolf.” The corps used computerized inundation maps to predict the flood levels, but the computers couldn’t account for the local drought that accompanied the heavy rains in the far north that pushed the river up. The parched land in the basin soaked up more water than anticipated. And, said senior project manager Kent Parrish in the corps’ Vicksburg District, it was only the second time the floodway had been used. The forecasters were not intimately

familiar with every twist and turn in the terrain and how the water would react there. Moreover, Parrish pointed out, the corps can’t afford to be wrong on the low side. “Think what would happen if they didn’t leave and it flooded,” he said. Rachel Rodi, a spokesman in the New Orleans District, said the corps hadn’t wanted to release those early, tentative projections on how high the water would get in the floodway. But when the corps shared them with state officials, the state released them. Then, as rain stopped to the north and Morganza didn’t need to release as much water as initially planned, the National Weather Service lowered its predictions. That lowered the crest in the Atchafalaya area, but locals were still mad about the earlier predictions. Whatever happened, Mayor Collette worries that the next time an evacuation order comes, people in the basin won’t leave, much like residents of South Florida refusing evacuation orders in the face of a Category 5 hurricane. When asked about the locals’ sentiment toward the corps, Collette responded, “They hate ’em. I mean what they did, I still don’t understand what they did. I still don’t think it was right. The people of Butte La Rose will never leave again. This is a floodway, and we didn’t even get to flood stage. The people are all thinking now, ‘We can take the flood. We not worried.’ ” “Next time, 90 percent are not going to leave,” he added. “I’m not no Corps of Engineers guy or college graduate or nothing like that, but I lived through the ’73 flood and I knew what to expect.” Most of the people forced to evacuate last spring have returned because the swamp is all they know and all they want to know. Louviere, crouched on the top of his truck, smiled when asked about how he will respond next time. “I don’t leave, man. What’s there to

“I’m not no Corps of Engineers guy or college graduate or nothing... but I lived through the ‘73 flood and I knew what to expect.”

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Photo by Jared Burleson

Henderson Mayor Sherdin Collette says “90 percent” of local residents will ignore the next evacuation order. He blames the Corps.

leave? If it floods, it floods. Whether I’m here or not. I mean, I have a boat. There’s no better place in the world. Man, honestly, hunting and fishing, can’t get no better life.” Collette swears that he was conceived on

the Atchafalaya River and isn’t going anywhere. He will tell you his first responsibility is being mayor, but his first love is the swamp. “To make me actually leave the basin for-

ever, I don’t know what it would take. I go on vacations and all, but when the vacations are over, I want to come back home. It’s a love of the area, our heritage, the way we were raised. One thing people love is the stories

they hear from the basin. It goes down generation to generation. It’s love. That’s really the only way I can define it. We understand that we’re in a floodway, but it’s worth the risk, worth taking that chance.” n THE

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OLD RIVER

CONTEST OF WILLS The Mississippi wants to take a hard right and bypass New Orleans. Army Engineers want to keep it where it is. The battleground is the remote Old River Control Structure. The only question is who will win. By Claire Douglas Photo by Jared Burleson

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Photo by Jared Burleson

The Auxilary Structure located at Old River cost $206 million to build.

THE BATTLEFIELD IS STRANGELY QUIET. Miles and miles of flat land and freshly cut grass create a strangely soothing effect beneath the Louisiana sky. Scrawny trees stick cautiously out of the gravel banks of the Mississippi River. It is hard to imagine a war being fought here. Then, as if out of Stephen Spielberg’s imagination, four concrete beasts with steel arms loom against the cerulean sky. You can’t miss ‘em. All this hardware is meant to do one thing – keep the continent’s most powerful river from taking a hard right and rudely romping through Louisiana on a new route to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1973, the river almost won the war. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is determined to keep that from happening.

The man in charge here is Russell Beauvais. To work, he wears mud-splattered leather boots under dark Wrangler denim. He carries two cell phones, one clipped to each hip. His sun-worn olive complexion and his husky Cajun accent let you know that he is not the kind of man you argue with, whether you are a river, or a journalist. The four structures that make up the Old River Control System are Beauvais’ domain. He is doing nothing less than following a direct order of Congress, making sure that each day roughly 30 percent of the water goes down the Atchafalaya and 70 percent down the Mississippi. The Mississippi wants all or nothing. The route down the Atchafalaya to the Gulf is 173 miles shorter than the Mississippi’s current channel and considerably steeper.

The Mississippi wants to take the most direct route to the Gulf but the corps wants it to keep winding through Baton Rouge and New Orleans to keep commerce moving steadily. New Orleans has a major stake in this battle. If it lost the river, it would lose one of the nation’s largest ports, thousands of jobs, and a fresh water supply. And all those petrochemical plants along the river between Baton Rouge and New Orleans would be left high and dry. Thus, the battlefield. The dam-like, 566-foot-long Low Sill Structure, in operation since 1962, has eleven 44-foot-wide movable gates. The 3,356-footlong Overbank Structure was built next with 73 gates. The Corps thought these two would be enough until the spring of 1973, when the unthinkable almost happened. THE

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Photo by Jared Burleson

The Old River Control Structure helps keep the Atchafalaya River from capturing the Mississippi River

Melting snow from the Midwest combined with torrential rains and rumbled down the Mississippi in a prolonged assault, causing 550,000 cubic feet of water per second to push its way through the bays of the Low Sill Structure. This violent surge lasted three months and clawed holes in the foundation, exposing 50 feet of the 90-footlong steel pilings that support the structure. The weakened structure could not handle the pressure. A 67-foot-high concrete wing wall crumbled into the river, alerting the Corps to the problem in the most alarming way. The corps dumped boulders into the gaping hole under the structure for days, averting catastrophe. After the flood, it patched it up. Then the corps sent for reinforcements. THE

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A 442-foot-long Auxiliary Structure was completed in 1986 at a cost of $206 million. And then the last structure, a privately owned hydraulic power plant, was completed in 1990. The Auxillary Structure seemed to take the pressure off the other structures. Then came the 2011 flood — the worst in the river’s history. For weeks bloggers and journalists wondered whether Old River would hold. It did. The four structures worked together flawlessly. There was some scouring from water rushing through the structures, but it was minimal. At least for now, the Auxillary Structure seemed to be the final piece in the puzzle. Beauvais, a man whose speech is dotted

with such colorful phrases as “mo’ prob’ly,” wasn’t surprised at all. “I have lived in Morganza for 47 years. Born and raised. My home is 1,000 feet from the levee. I’ve never bought flood insurance and I’m not planning on it. Mother Nature might have somethin’ for us, but we have somethin’ for her.” People have been confident about Old River before. Prior to the 1973 flood, a corps promotional video told of shackling the river. Even today, skeptics like Dr. Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for the popular blog Weather Underground, Inc., remain unconvinced. He calls Old River “America’s Achilles’ heel.” “Considering that the structure almost failed in 1973,” he said, “I think [the corps

is] being a little bit too optimistic about its invulnerability[...] Are you familiar with the World War II Maginot line that the French put up to protect themselves from Germany? Well it was a great fortification and all, but it didn’t go all the way. The Germans went right around it. We have a potential Maginot line situation with the Old River Control Structure. It might be the strongest fortification along the west bank of the Mississippi River but if they don’t manage to keep the river from getting through on either side of it, it will all be for naught.” He has concerns that he doesn’t think the Corps is taking into consideration. “The project flood is rated to be about a 1-in-750-year flood, and I question those ratings. Particularly since we have had an inordinate number of 100- and 500-year floods in the last few decades and I think that is due in part to two reasons. One, is we are changing the flood plain by adding more structures, building more levees, always adding more water behind those levees raises flood heights. Number two, climate change can potentially put more flood waters in the system as well. Heavy precipitation events have increased over the past century in the U.S., and one big bugaboo that the Army Corps never considered in their rating is the possible landfall of a tropical storm in May during one of these flooding events. If that were to happen, it would quite easily surpass a project flood.” And then it is simple: “The river would just be uncontrollable at that point.” In a 1987 interview with author John McPhee published in the New Yorker magazine, Tulane Law Professor Oliver Houck famously said, “The greatest arrogance was the stealing of the sun. The second-greatest arrogance is running rivers

backward. The third-greatest arrogance is trying to hold the Mississippi in place.” With a laugh, Masters agrees. “We can do it for a while, but we have to be perfect. If there is any deviation from perfection, the river will take advantage of it. It has a long time to wait. And we can put it off for a while, but eventually it will have its way. It might be a few hundred years, a few thousand years. It might be next year. But eventually the river will win.” Even within the corps you can find engineers who are loath to claim that the Mississippi will never be able to change course. Masters and Beauvais would both agree that the battle will likely be won or lost at Old River. And make no mistake. It is a battle. Stand on the low sill and look at the sheer bulk of the dam and then turn and see how short a distance it is to the river and you begin to understand. You can see towboats pushing barges up the Mississippi and hear the roar of the horn warning passing vessels not to get too close to the suction of the Old River intake channel. Barges have been known to get sucked in and threaten to crash into the Low Sill Structure. But Beauvais is there every day, rain or shine, drought or flood. He knows the landscape, he knows these structures of concrete and steel, and he knows the river. He understands the threat. “We won’t let that happen,” he said. “We can take care of it.” And if it did happen? Brushing aside fears that the river could never again be pulled back and held in its current channel, Beauvais sticks his chin out, widens his stance and responds with the confidence of a man who lives in the shadow of the levee. “Then the corps could put it back.” n

“I’ve never bought flood insurance, and I’m not planning on it. Mother Nature might have somethin’ for us, but we have somethin’ for her.”

THE

BATTLEFIELD Army engineers have built extensive defenses at Old River to make sure no more than 30 percent of the Mississippi flows into the adjacent Atchafalaya River. Together, the Old River Control Structure can discharge about 700,000 cubic feet of water per second (300 million gallons per minute) in a flood. They include: A 566-foot-long Low Sill Structure with 11 gates, each 44 feet wide. Weakened in the 1973 flood, it nearly collapsed and underwent extensive repairs. A 3,356-foot-long Overbank Structure with 73 bays, each 44 feet wide. It operates when the river jumps its banks. A 67-foot-high, 442-foot-long Auxiliary Structure with six gates, each 62 feet wide. It was added in 1986 at a cost of $206 million. Also at Old River are a lock that allows vessels to pass from the Mississippi to the nearby Atchafalaya River and the Sidney A. Murray Jr. Hydroelectric Station, a 192-megawatt, $520 million power plant completed in 1985. The 12-story, 25,000ton plant was towed 208 miles up the Mississippi from New Orleans, the largest “vessel” ever towed up the river past Baton Rouge. Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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FLOODWAYS

CONCRETE CAVALRY The real saviors of 2011 were the floodways, vast areas where the river was set free to roam. In places like New Orleans and Cairo, they are seen as sacred lands. By Margaret Ann Morgan

Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The Morganza Spillway bleeds off water from the Mississippi to protect New Orleans and Baton Rouge. THE

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MOST STORIES HAVE A HERO who sweeps in just as everything is falling apart and saves the day. The heroes of the flood fight in 2011 were the floodways, vast tracts of land from the Mississippi River’s historic flood plain that serve as relief valves to reduce pressure on the levees. Just when the flood grew the most dangerous, they siphoned off huge amounts of the river’s muddy lifeblood. At Cairo, a floodway took 550,000 cubic feet of water per second out of the river, saving the stressed mainline levees and Cairo itself. In Louisiana, floodways diverted more than 1.1 million cubic feet per second and allowed a grateful New Orleans to breathe easier. The flood control structures that guard the entrances to Louisiana’s huge water storage areas are towering battlements of concrete and steel, veritable fortresses of the river. When a traveler approaches them, they seem nothing more than oversize bridges along the “river road.” But in 2011, their importance became crystal clear. THE

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They worked so well that they made the flood seem almost scripted. “This entire plan is written down,” says Army Engineers manager Rick Shelton, referring to the corps’ readiness for a major flood. “Every step, just like a game plan.” The plan includes all four floodways along the 2,320-mile stretch of river. The Birds Point-New Madrid and Morganza floodways and the Bonnet Carré Spillway all opened gates during the 2011 flood. This was the first time all three had been used at the same time. A fourth, the West Atchafalaya Floodway, has never been used. The Old River Control Structure may not technically be a floodway, but it serves much the same purpose. It seeks to bleed off 30 percent of the Mississippi’s flow year-round and send it down the adjacent Atchafalaya River to the Gulf of Mexico. It is actually three structures – a low sill, overbank and auxiliary structure. Together, they are designed to safely bleed 620,000 cubic feet of water per second out of the Mississippi. Old River, Morganza and Bonnet Carré together diverted 1,169,000 cubic feet per second from the river in 2011, leaving the flood greatly diminished by the time it got to Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Without them, New Orleans would have been inundated. The floodways owe their existence to the great flood of 1927, which inundated an area the size of South Carolina for months, displacing 600,000 people from their homes. It washed away levees from Cairo to New Orleans and forced the government to drop its insistence on a failed “levees-only” policy of flood control. The corps realized that the river needed room to spread out, and depending on levees restricted it too much during floods, driving stages ever higher and increasing pressure on the earthen levees. After the 1927 flood, Congress charged the corps with building the complex system of levees, floodways, tributary improvements and channel improvements that performed so spectacularly in 2011.

They are crucial to the corps’ plan to pass a major flood, but the agency has traditionally been reluctant to use them until absolutely necessary. That’s because people living in the floodways stand to lose a lot when the gates are opened. “We had mass panic on our hands,” says Kent Parrish, a Vicksburg manager of the Army Corps of Engineers, describing the emotions when a decision to open the floodways had to be made. “Folks were starving for information.” Facing a need to protect large numbers of people from the river, officials during a major flood must cope with the knowledge that using the floodways will hurt residents of rural towns in its path. A decision to open the gates is based on several indicators, such as current and projected river flows and levee conditions, extended rain forecasts and duration of high river stages. Before that decision, however, those living in the river’s path are alerted. Just as a flood lasts for a long time, so does the passing of water through the floodways. Floodgates are typically open for several weeks until the river falls and slows back down to what Parrish calls a “moderate flow.” In New Orleans, the opening of Bonnet Carré turned into a celebration, with hundreds of people showing up, some with picnic baskets, to watch the gates open and the water rush through. The control structures along the Mississippi are bridges to new towns, places of employment for engineers and pathways for the strongest source of water in North America. They are what saved towns, farms and working families from potential disaster and enabled the corps to call its handling of the worst flood in our time a “huge success.” No wonder that after directing the battle against what he termed “the flood of century,” Gen. Michael Walsh, then the head of the Mississippi River Commission, suggested it may be time to consider a study of whether another floodway might be necessary at some point.

“We had mass panic on our hands. Folks were starving for information.”

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Workmen use cranes to open Bonnet Carre, the guardian of New Orleans.

Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

In the event of a monster flood that taxes every floodway, the corps can use backwater areas along the river to store water on an emergency basis. Backwater levees guarding the South Delta above Vicksburg, for example, are

designed to overtop when floodwaters get to a certain height on the Mississippi. Half a million acres or more could be flooded if that happened, but it would take pressure off the mainline levees that protect much larger numbers of people.

All in all, reports Charles Camillo in Divine Providence, his detailed history of the 2011 flood, the potential storage areas along the Mississippi could siphon off even more water if a project flood ever materializes. The floodways could take hundreds of

thousands of cubic feet per second and, if necessary, the backwater areas could take a lot more water – enough to cover 2,000 square miles with water 20 feet deep, sort of like a backup, or a net for the high-wire act of flood fighting. n THE

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VIDALIA, LA

Photo by Cain Madden

THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LEVEE They thought it was a great idea to build Vidalia’s $75 million municipal complex on the river side of the levee. After all, no flood had ever gotten that high. By Bracey Harris

AT THE TIME it seemed like a great idea. Officials in this little Louisiana town, population 4,229, thought they’d hit the jackpot with their new $75 million municipal complex on the west bank of the Mississippi River for all to see. It had a gleaming new convention center with a great river view, a hospital, a hotel and a riverwalk. And 400 jobs. Often overlooked in the shadow of Natchez, its larger, better-known neighbor across the river, Vidalia was trying to project a shinier image. At the time, the fact that the complex was THE

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on the wrong side of the levee didn’t seem to matter. After all, why be concerned about high water when flood insurance was not required? The buildings were thought to be safe, built at least 2 feet above the 100-year flood mark. Then came the flood of 2011. “Unbelievable.” Vidalia Mayor Hyram Copeland uses that word again and again to describe the flood. He started using it about the time the Army Engineers called to warn that record river stages were coming – enough water to put his beloved

riverside complex in jeopardy. The first week of May, the city began to prepare for the approaching water. Inmates from a nearby prison were used for sandbagging. On May 4, Copeland received harrowing news: The flood would top the sandbag levee on May 10. They were running out of time. They began surrounding the waterfront with sand-filled Hesco barriers. The barriers were built to shield troops from bullets, and are still used in Afghanistan, but only time would tell if they would stop the water.

On May 9, they finished installing the barriers. On Tuesday, May 10, the crest arrived. Some Hesco baskets had small leaks, but the corps had anticipated that. Although water never entered the buildings, there were scares. At one point, water began to seep underneath the concrete foundation of the convention center. “We thought we were going to lose it at one point,” Copeland said. A pump and sandbags solved the issue. Copeland laughs when recalling a mother duck and her ducklings swimming in and then out the other side. And of course, there were gators. “The biggest problem we had were rumors,” Copeland said. “People were fidgeting.” Most were centered around the only thing that mattered – the levee. “There’s a break in the levee” was a favorite. “To me it’s a miracle. I’ve never seen anything like it and probably never will,” Copeland said. Even though the river has fooled him once, the mayor said he figures another flood of the 2011 scale is unlikely. “We hope and pray it never happens again, but if it does, we’ll be prepared,” he said. Across the river in Natchez, they were luckier. The city is built high upon the bluffs and had few problems. But that didn’t keep Natchez from helping its neighbor. On May 5, Vidalia’s Promise Hospital was evacuated. The orthopedic facility stopped admitting patients on April 28, but soon realized with a crest prediction of 60 feet that an evacuation was in order. It would be too risky to rely solely on the 8-foot Hesco barrier surrounding the building. Several of the patients were transferred to beds in Natchez. In fact, it sometimes seemed that nearly half of Vidalia drove across the bridge to Natchez for high ground, just in case. Even the animals were leaving. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a number of Vidalians sought refuge in Natchez but had nowhere to put their beloved pets. Anticipating this as a problem in 2011, Adams County Sheriff David Mayfield contacted the Humane Society to request assistance. Within two weeks, 18-wheelers loaded with food and kennels arrived. In 36 hours, a temporary animal shelter was stationed in an abandoned warehouse. Volunteers from as far as Maine showed up to help care for Vidalia’s animals.

Photo by Cain Madden

A levee of hesco baskets saved the Vidalia Convention Center.

Mayfield estimates there were at least 1,000 cat and dog refugees. “There were some goats, too,” he said. Farmers also took in animals. Mayfield was not surprised. He viewed it as further evidence of the generous spirit that often runs strong in small towns, especially in a crisis. David Gardner, the city engineer of Nat-

“We hope and pray it never happens again, but if it does, we’ll be prepared.” chez, helped with efforts to keep the town from becoming inundated. Using satellite-generated maps, his office could predict which areas would be affected by water. However, the maps weren’t perfect. Although surrounded by water, a cozy bed-and-breakfast, Magnolia Vale, appeared dry in the images. Gardner’s biggest concern was the waste-

water treatment plant on the riverfront. At one point, the Mississippi began backing up into a pipe running from the plant. The solution was simple: block the pipe. But there was a problem. Where would the untreated water go? Letting the water out through its normal route would let the Mississippi in. Blocking the pipe would give the excess water nowhere to go. The city received permission from environmental officials to pump the water into a creek next to the plant. Finding pumps that would fit, and stay put, proved to be a challenge. However, Natchez is not a town that shies away. “One thing about our people over here,” Gardner said, “is when we get into a bind, we can come together to make it work.” “The wastewater plant was a scary deal that we went through,” he said. “Luckily, we didn’t get hit too hard there.” The two cities also coordinated their floodfighting efforts. Natchez provided helicopters to patrol the levee near Vidalia. A mobile command unit also was set up on top of the bluff. Officials from both cities were in constant communication. A year later, it’s hard to tell Vidalia went through a flood. The businesses that lost income during the summer are now thriving. The city received aid from FEMA to help cover the $3 million in damage. Across the river in Natchez, they hope that the “big one” doesn’t come again. But if it does, they’ll be ready to lend a hand. n THE

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VICKSBURG, MS

Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

A towboat pushes acres of barges under the Vicksburg bridge.

MAIN STREET

The big river is also one of America’s busiest highways. By Blake Johnson

STAND ON ANY HIGH BLUFF, any bridge overlooking the Mississippi River and you will see them. String after string after string of giant barges – acres of them -- pushed by powerful towboats whose horn blasts are a familiar sound to those who live or camp along the river. Up and down the length of the river they run, carrying the commerce of America – 60 percent of the nation’s grain, petrochemicals, heating oil for the Northeast, THE

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even shipments of cars and trucks. There are barges stacked with steel, packed with gravel, bulging with coal. From Indians trading furs via canoe to steamboats carrying cotton to powerful towboats pushing 30 barges loaded with oil, the Mississippi has been to American growth and culture what the Silk Road was for developing civilizations long ago. “Back in the ‘30s it was like a little country two-lane road and as our works have

increased and we’ve gotten a much more efficient channel, it’s like an interstate highway,” said Freddie Pinkard, Mississippi River channel improvement coordinator for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Vicksburg District. In 1960, 140 million tons of commerce moved up and down the river each year. Today, that number has swollen to over 500 million. It takes approximately 333,000 barges to carry that much cargo, com-

pared to five million railcars, or 20 million 18-wheeler trucks. Towboat operators are quick to tell you that towboats burn less gas per ton, which would explain why the river is still such a vital artery in American trade. Highway or not, it is still a river. And rivers tend to wander. And flood. That’s why the Corps spends so much time and money on it. This living highway must be protected and confined. The Corps has done that through its Mississippi River and Tributaries Project, a complex system of levees, floodways, tributary improvements and channel improvements. Since construction began in the late 1920s, over $13.9 billion has been spent on the river. Including the 2011 flood, the Corps estimates that the MR&T has now saved around $500 billion in damages. Pinkard’s office is charged with keeping the river navigable and keeping the channel where it is. His primary tools: dredges, dikes, and revetments. With the number of tow boats and barges steadily increasing, the need for a safer navigation channel has increased as well. The ideal channel is nine feet deep, except from Baton Rouge to the Gulf, where it needs to be 45 feet deep to accommodate oceangoing vessels. But since the big river carries around 160 million tons of sediment a year, it’s sometimes hard to hit those marks. When channels start to clog up, the Corps steps in to help using giant dredges. Dredges are essentially a cross between giant dental tools and vacuum hose attachments. There are three used by the Corps. The dustpan dredge has a wide mouth with high velocity water jets and incredibly powerful suction useful for deepening channels clogged with sand. The cutterhead dredge looks more like a drill and is used to cut through clay and other thicker sediments. Both suck up the material, then spit it into parts of the river not used for navigation. Hopper barges are only used at the lower end of the river where the world’s busiest shipping channel is much deeper. They suck sand off the bottom and deposit it into a hopper. Later, the material is dumped in the ocean. For decades these vessels were a constant sight on the river. But since the 1960s, when the Corps began building rock dikes to coax the rebellious current back into the channel,

the need for dredging has declined. In 2008, only two million cubic yards were dredged in the Vicksburg District (compared to over 18 million a year during the early 1970s), and 125 miles of dikes are now in place (compared to about 40 miles in the early 1970s). “Dikes on the Mississippi are typically a stone structure… The primary purpose is to narrow the channel, keep velocities high and scour the bed so we have enough depth for navigation,” explains Pinkard. He estimates that the Vicksburg District has completed about 85 percent of the dikes needed to control the river. Like the river, though, these numbers can change. Along the way, the Corps has also found a way to create a better habitat for fish who like deeper water. It has cut notches into some of the dikes, allowing water to rush

“Back in the ‘30s it was like a little country twolane road, and as our works have increased... it’s like an interstate highway. through and scour out deep holes behind the dike, creating places where more fish can live. Dikes and dredges can only do so much, though. Everything the Corps has worked so hard to build must be protected from the meandering monster that is the Mississippi. It gnaws at caving banks at flows that can reach more than two million cubic feet of water a second. Left to its own devices, it would eventually claw its way to the levee, then carve through the levee itself. The Corps can’t allow that. It’s bad for river commerce and bad for the people and cities on

the protected side of the levee. So the Corps came up with a method to armor the sides of the channel. It lays concrete mattresses – revetments, the Corps calls them -- along the banks of the river to prevent any further erosion or bank caving. “Bank stabilization, or revetments, keeps the levees protected as well as other flood risk management structures,” Pinkard said. He figures this process of paving the river has saved much more money than it has cost. To protect the channel alignment and repair bank damage from last year’s flood, the Vicksburg-based mat sinking unit will travel over 928 miles this year between Cairo and Tropical Bend, La. Normally, its work is done during low-water months from July to November, but this year it figures to continue until February 2013. The corps plans to place 384,088 concrete squares along the river channel, half a million tons of concrete. In the Vicksburg District, the process begins in a large field with stacks upon stacks of concrete slabs that are 100 square feet per square. They are 25 feet long, four feet wide, and three inches thick. In the past the slabs were flat and smooth, but since the 1990s the Corps has cut grooves into them. The new grooves serve as a nice place for macroinvertebrates to thrive. Fish eat macroinvertabrates. The stacks of squares are then loaded onto barges and carried to the mat sinking vessel owned by the Vicksburg District, the only such vessel on the Mississippi. Pinkard estimates that the district has completed 96 percent of its revetment project -- 296 of the 306 miles in the master plan. This is arduous and slow work. The Vicksburg District finishes about one mile of revetment each year. It is because of the slow pace that the teams, along with other boats and barges and even a small hotel boat, create a small city on the river for each project. The Benyaurd, a Corps workboat, is usually part of that floating city. Captain Randy Young has spent many a month trying to clean up a mess on the Big Muddy. He says it’s hard work, often tedious. But he knows how important it is, and there is a bonus -the shifts on this floating city are six hours on, six hours off. “I get more sleep on the ship than when I am at home,” Young smiled. n THE

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VICKSBURG, MS

THE BREACH It’s one thing to lose a levee. It’s another to lose the very dirt you farm. By Peyton Thigpen

“IT WAS INEVITABLE. We all knew what was going to happen. It was the devastation that was beyond what any of us imagined,” Tap Parker said in his small farm office here. Parker once farmed 3,000 acres of Louisiana’s finest agricultural land. Now, because of a 900-foot gash in a non-federal levee that withstood the test of time, and everything the Mississippi River could throw at it for a hundred years, “there’s a crater 80 feet deep and 40 acres big that is right where my prime cotton field was,” Parker said. “The sand is 10 to 12 feet deep.” On the morning of May 12, 2011, state troopers in Black Hawk helicopters picked up Reynold Minsky, president of the 5th Louisiana Levee District for 17 years and counting, to check on the levee that they all knew would eventually succumb to the power of the Mississippi River’s largest flood in recent history. They just didn’t know when. As they flew over the 14-mile section of levee, which was much older than Minsky THE

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by a long shot, they saw what was happening. Sandwiched between the old levee and a bigger, stronger, higher federal levee built in 1942, 12,000 acres of some of Louisiana’s most fertile soil was doomed. As water began to come over the top, Minsky was left speechless in the parade of Black Hawks. “You just can’t imagine how bad that damn river is,” Minsky said. That was on a Thursday. By Friday morn-

“It was the devastation that was beyond what any of us imagined.”

ing, when Parker got in an airplane to see the damage for himself, the river had gouged a 900-foot hole in the north end of the loop levee, creating a 40-acre lake in the middle of his land. The volume of water that rushed through this hole was staggering. When the levee broke, the river at Greenville, Miss., lowered by half a foot. It happened so quickly that other levee boards in the area were left wondering where all that water was going, desperately hoping their levees had not blown out. The river filled the 12,000-acre area in a mere 12 hours and left water 20 feet deep. At the levee break, the enormous force of the water coming over the top dug a hole 80 feet deep. The hole, and the lake it created, are testaments to how the river can change a landscape forever. All the material from this hole, mostly sand, now sits in the middle of Parker’s field, 12 feet deep. “It’s a beach,” Parker said, idly staring out the window. “You can’t imagine the destruction until

Photo by Jared Burleson

Levee District President Reynold Minsky on top of a deep gash out through a non-federal levee by the 2011 flood. THE

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Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Photo by Jared Burleson

The river deposited sand 10 to 12 feet deep on Tap Parker’s farmland.

you walk up to it,” Parker said. And he was right. Viewing the lake’s sheer enormity requires a constant visual sweep from left to right. “You walk up to a 30-foot cliff where the water came through. It just took a chunk of THE

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the earth away,” Parker said. “There’s people fishing in it now.” It’s right where Parker had his promising cotton crop last year. This is a mere microcosm of what could happen if a mainline levee broke on the Mississippi River. The destruction would be

greater than anyone for generations has ever seen. Water would inundate acres upon acres, rendering the land uninhabitable and unusable for who knows how long. And the cost of repairs could financially wreck everyone involved.

It’s going to cost $8 million to fix the non-federal levee. One hole is 900 feet wide. Another is a mile and a third wide. And the entire financial burden of repairing them rests upon the landowners. As Minsky sat in his office decorated

with mounted deer from the ’70s and every certificate of appointment to the levee board since 1983, he expressed concern for the farmers, all close friends. “I went to FEMA. FEMA agreed to fix it. We went through all we needed to do and how to do it. I did this as a favor to those landowners ’cause I knew what was going on and I’m the president of the levee board and I knew what was happening. There just ain’t no money,” Minsky said. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency found a clause that essentially said it would not fund any property repairs riverward of the mainline levee if no one lives on the property. These 12,000 acres fall into that category. Now the landowners have agreed to tax themselves to pay out a bond over the next 30 years to finance the repairs. One of Parker’s four sons could be farming the land by that time. For now, the planters have to play a waiting game. “We know this year is gone,” Parker said. With the levee’s wounds still bleeding, the farmers have to be sure there is no threat of another high-water event before they can even think about planting. “It costs about $200 per acre to plant a crop. With 3,000 acres, that’s 600 grand.

The river pours through a hole in the levee.

That’s half a million dollars I could have invested and the river would just take it away. So there’s no way in the world anyone is going to take that gamble.” So Parker sits and waits. Luckily, Parker had last year’s crops insured, which allowed him to recoup financial losses from the harvest. “What you can’t recoup,” he said, “is that dirt that is gone. You can’t put the lake back, you just can’t. That’s what makes me sick. Losing the crop is one thing. I can work hard the next year and recover. That hole is going to be a hole. I can’t make any money fishing. I need the dirt there.” Sitting in his wood-paneled office at his pecan market, Minsky joked about having been appointed to the levee board by every governor since 1983. While searching the certificates of appointment lining the walls, he said, “Actually he (Gov. Bobby Jindal) hadn’t appointed me yet this year; he just tells me to keep on doing what I’m doing.” Meanwhile, Parker sat in his farm office just a few miles up the road, thinking about the land he’ll never get back. “When you lose the dirt and the very foundation that you need to make a living, that’s what’s sickening.” n THE

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MEMPHIS, TN

Photo by Cain Madden

The flood drew curiosity-seekers, but did relatively little damage to Memphis.

THE SACRIFICE FOR THE GREATER GOOD To save the levees and the town of Cairo, engineers had to flood 100 homes and 130,000 acres of prime farmland. By Mary Love Fair

More rain. The words resounded in Jim Pogue’s head with brewing anticipation as he poured his coffee waiting for the morning report. A short two weeks had gone by since the National Weather Service sparked a fire in the Memphis offices of the Army Corps of Engineers. The prediction of a stationary frontal system over the Ohio, middle Mississippi, and Arkansas valleys through April 27 was alarming and assured the corps a good fight. THE

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The rain proved unrelenting, and Pogue, the Memphis public affairs chief, feared it was only a matter of time before the river gage would continue its steady climb toward 61 feet. That was the magic number at which the corps’ operational plan considered blowing a levee and flooding miles of fertile farmland in the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway. Soon Memphis would be full of camera crews hungry for the latest shots of the flooded city front, but for now, the corps was

preoccupied with the northern stretch of its territory -- that healthy swath of farmland that might need to be intentionally swamped to save levees around Cairo, Ill. With this prediction of a lingering front, Pogue hoped the weather would break and the corps could avoid opening the floodway. If not, the engineers would soon have to begin the execution of a well-practiced drill, except this time, it would be no drill. As Major General Michael Walsh, then president of the Mississippi River

Commission, watched from his command post, he feared that the rising river that hugged Cairo could soon over-top the levee and give the river free rein over the town. The town had become an island – the Mississippi on one side and the Ohio on the other. The rain not only lingered, but steadily increased. Everyone in Cairo had the same question: Will they blow the levee? As the flood fight escalated, corps and levee board inspectors combed their embattled levees looking for any signs of failure. Adding to the drama was what Pogue refers to as the “mother of all sandboils” at Cairo, so large that it threatened the integrity of the levee. Barrel-sized sandboils are routine and rarely pose problems, but this one was far from ordinary. It was, as Pogue said with a sigh, “crazy scary.” Cairo wasn’t the only place in jeopardy. Army engineers were worried about levees across the river in Fulton County, Kentucky and at other locations as well. “We were looking,” Pogue said, “at the possibility of uncontrolled and catastrophic failure in numerous locations, which could have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses and the strong possibility of lost lives.” With no relief in sight, General Walsh gave the order to blow the levee. Farmers and local residents were warned, and the National Guard was called in to help with evacuation. Shortly after 10 p.m., bright lights from the explosions lit the sky and turned night to day. The river rushed into the breach. The floodway filled quickly, and the level in the main channel started dropping. The plan to divert at least some of the flow through an escape valve had worked. Cairo was saved. But the Memphis District was not through. Further down the river as Amos Lee began to “Shout Out Loud” and the eclectic crowd of music connoisseurs waited on a “Night Train,” the water began to steal the show at the annual music mecca of Memphis in May. Brantley Davidson loved the music but couldn’t keep his eye off the river. “There were times that weekend when they thought they’d have to cancel the music fest because of the water coming up to Riverside Drive – something that now,

seeing where the river currently sits, seems impossible. It was odd because Memphis didn’t receive a ton of rain. It was the North that did and therefore affected us,” Davidson laughed. “I remember listening to (the band) Wilco, thinking the river was going to eat me soon.” Some considered it a victory that the river did not venture past Riverside Drive. Others, including Joe Spake, offered a different perspective. “When you’ve got Riverside flooded across Beale Street, it’s a pretty big deal. It’s pretty darn amazing, and pretty dramatic,” he said. “When I was young I worked down on the river on the Memphis Queen. I saw some pretty high water but it was nothing compared to what the May flood brought.”

“When I was young I worked down on the river... I saw some pretty high water, but it was nothing compared to what the May flood brought.” Downstream, the high water from the rising river began to flood low-lying areas around Memphis itself. Trailer parks and other homes in the Wolf River flood plain disappeared under muddy backwater. News media reports sometimes made it sound like downtown Memphis was in danger of inundation. But the flood was never a realistic threat for over 90 percent of the city, located on the Chickasaw Bluffs, high above the river. Still, no one in Memphis was accustomed to seeing the river this high and the city buzzed with fascination. People who lived near the Wolf were rightly alarmed.

Loretta Hurt, project manager for United Way of the Mid-South, recounts the threat. “Memphis was about 2 feet away from a catastrophic event,” she said. “Tributaries were already back-flowing and the water had no place to go. We came close to experiencing the type of flooding witnessed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.” A few hundred yards away from Mud Island, Harbor Town homes sat above the hundred-year flood plain, but as the water crept closer, residents started to wonder whether that was enough. It was, but not by much. The water teased the development, venturing into back yards and garages and swamping the marina, where a yellow line ten feet above the boats serves as a manmade watermark, a reminder of how high the river can climb. It was a very different day of recess and games of tag as the pigtails and sneakers of the children met the water that began to creep up around the edges of the Maria Montessori School nestled so safely in the heart of Harbor Town. A naïve excitement like that triggered by a first snow ran through the hearts of the children as they squealed at the thought of a lake in their back yard. Fear was trumped with fascination as the children distracted themselves from times tables to watch the men pile “bags of sugar” outside their decorated windows. Elizabeth Glasgow, property manager of Harbor Town, laughed as she recalls the assembly line of parents, students, and wheelbarrows sandbagging against the side of the school. The water never breached the bounds of the school, but they were well prepared for a fight. Different sentiments arose down the street as shoppers at Miss Cordelia’s grocery and deli brushed shoulders and dropped their two cents about the rising tide creeping into their town. As water levels rose, Miss Cordelia’s became a natural hub for not only for dinner, but also to get the latest reports on the rising river and the safety of Harbor Town. Although the development was well protected and Memphis came away fairly unscathed, the hundred-year flood, as Spake said, was “pretty darned amazing. And pretty dramatic.” n THE

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VICKSBURG, MS

Photo by Petre Thomas

MEMORY HOUSE

High on a Vicksburg bluff, a new museum traces the history of the corps, the river and us. By Blake Johnson IT PUZZLES PASSING MOTORISTS when they see it. Right there on Washington Street, tucked among the buildings, sits a large riverboat, high and dry above the river far below. It’s the MV Mississippi, once a floating headquarters for generals making inspection tours along the Mississippi River. Now, it’s an anchor for a new Army Corps of Engineers museum expected to open in late summer. The adjacent Lower Mississippi River Museum and Interpretive Center will be packed THE

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with interactive displays on the river and attempts to manage it. A scale model of the river itself will sit nearby. Exhibits will include interactive models of the levee system, life inside a refugee tent during the 1927 flood, a piloting simulator and a look at daily life aboard a riverboat. “The museum is going to be focusing on the risks and benefits of living near the river,” said corps senior project manager Mike Renacker. “I think there is a lesson that the corps has learned after Hurricane Katrina. It’s not really flood control. You can’t really control a flood.” He believes that no matter where they live, people need to be aware of the risks – wildfires and earthquakes in California, hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, tornadoes in the Deep South, or terrible flooding along the Mississippi River. “Just because you live behind the levee doesn’t mean that you’re guaranteed safe. You

assume a certain amount of risk, and that is what this museum is really going to tell you,” Renacker said. “The people of Vicksburg throughout history have dealt with a certain amount of risk, and they feel that the benefits of living close to the river far outweigh those risks.” It took a long time for this museum to rise. Congress authorized it in 1992. It took until 2003 to complete the design, and all plans were in final stages by 2005. The Motor Vessel Mississippi IV was decommissioned and purchased by the city of Vicksburg in 1992, and by 2007 the corps had the boat back in its possession. It cleaned it up and put it where it sits now as one of the museum’s main exhibits. It is certainly the largest. “The boat is going to focus on two major aspects, including the Mississippi River Commission, which is a presidentially appointed group that oversees the Mississippi River and

the management of that river,” Renacker said. “This boat housed them when they would take two huge tours up and down the river each year, so you’ll learn a bit about what they did there, and how they keep the river open. But you’ll also get a feel for daily life on the boat. It’s a fairly unique vessel, being a tugboat some of the time, a public facility for meetings at other times.” The boat helps make the museum different, he said. “It’s not just having pictures on the wall, or paragraphs on the wall. I wanted there to be a little more interactive stuff, so there will be touch screens, orientation theaters, a lot of interactive displays, some water tables – it’s a little bit of everything,” Renacker said. In 2009, a contract was signed to complete the main museum by the spring of 2012, but the project hit a few obstacles. “In 2010, we had some unexpected things really set us back,” Renacker said. “One of them was slope failure. As we were excavating to put in the foundation for the museum, the slope kind of gave way and it ended up costing us about six months total, because not only did the slope fall but there was a danger with the city’s main water line.” Then the flood of 2011 set back production another month. Renacker points out the footage on CNN that shows an old railroad depot with water climbing 4 feet up its sides. The museum, which sits nearby on higher ground, remained dry. Once construction resumed, the corps figured it would have the entire museum, exhibits and all, finished by late summer of this year. Upon completion of the building contract, the next contract will be to build a river model, much like the one found at Mud Island in Memphis. The model will focus on the section of the Mississippi that runs from Greenville to Natchez, showcasing specific landmarks and little towns along the way. “We’re using our Engineering Research and Development Center here and we’re designing a river model so that you can kind of see how the river jumps its banks, but how it’s protected by the levee system still,” Renacker said. The price of the museum: $26 million. The 2011 flood passed more water than the 1927 flood. No land not meant to be flooded was flooded. But the flood

Photo by Petre Thomas

The MV Mississippi is the museum’s major attraction.

works took a beating that required $1 billion in repairs to prepare for the next flood. According to Renacker, many people don’t understand why the corps should be spending more money on a system that didn’t fail. “This museum provides us an opportunity to really show the public and to educate the public on not only Vicksburg history, but also important projects like this,” Renacker said. “It’s the truth, this is a valuable tool, we’re going to spend money on PR anyway, and we notoriously do a horrible job,” Renacker said. “Engineers are nerds, they don’t really talk very well and they don’t communicate

very well, so this is a tool that can help us,” he joked. “You’re going to see a history of the Lower Mississippi River, you’re going to see the history of the corps’ involvement, you’re going to see the collaborative effort – because it’s not just the corps, it’s the city, the state, it’s everybody working together to make life work, to make the river manageable, and to do it in an environmentally friendly way,” Renacker said. When the museum opens, Renacker said last Spring, he would be first in line with his two boys for “a perfect way to kill a Sunday afternoon.” n THE

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LAKE VILLIAGE, AR

WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE CAN KILL YOU “There’s something out there we don’t know about.” By Kate Kenwright

LARRY RABORN HAD NEVER SEEN WATER DO THIS. But he watched — watched the swirling torrents of the muddy Mississippi rise, furiously spinning off sand boils, swamping farm levees and breeding wild rumors as it went. In his 22 years working for the Corps of Engineers, the flood fight of 2011 was the first time Raborn, 50, had ever worried about checking levees, battling sandboils, or informing his public. In fact, Raborn had never before had a public to inform. Plucked from the ranks, Raborn, an engineer by trade, was suddenly anointed sector commander for the Arkansas portion of the Mississippi levee system. The man in charge. With the worst flood in recorded history headed his way. Raborn’s men were responsible for inspecting a 75-mile stretch of levee never before tested by a flood like this. The small Arkansas staff was quickly supplemented when THE

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Raborn realized that he didn’t have enough men to cover things 24 hours a day. He essentially had to form and organize a new unit on the fly. “It’s not like the other offices in Vidalia and Greenwood,” he said. “They’ve got established protocol with the levee boards and stuff. But these levels that were projected we were saying, ‘Man, we don’t know what to expect, we’ve got to staff up. And internally it caused a lot of chaos. They’d say, ‘We don’t need that many people.’ And I’d say, “Oh yes we do.” The entire unit worked out of a trailer near Lake Village with one Internet-connected computer. Men were being trained to look for problems with levees including seepage, sand boils, and slides. They were untested, untried, and inexperienced, as was their supervisor. “It was training me as it went on,” Raborn ruefully recalled. The flood fight in Arkansas was spectacu-

larly successful, but success is never without tradeoffs. A year after the flood, Raborn was still shaking off the after effects of all the long days and unrelenting pressure. “It was just the unknown, what the next thing that was going to crop up would be, and how you would deal with it,” said Raborn, who still suffers from sleep problems as well as colitis, which he believes is a result of the stress. “There was enough pressure on me already,” Raborn said. “But I’d quit work about 8 or 8:30, sometimes it’d be 11 o’clock you know, and then you try to eat something and you’re trying to be in bed by 10, well that’s not good for you. And have to be back at the office by 6:15 the next day.” In parts of Raborn’s territory the water climbed to within 8 or 9 feet of the top of the levee. But even at that level, the pressure on the levees was immense. Water pushed under the big earthen wall, boiling out on the land

side, creating little geysers, sandboils that had the potential to undermine the levee if they weren’t caught in time. With water that high, every inch the river rose meant an increase in problems, an increase in worry, and an increase in effort. “You would find more things happening along longer reaches of the levee, and you become much more aware of your inability to fight the whole thing the higher it rises,” Raborn said. Sand boils and seepage are apt to appear anywhere. Oxbow lakes, old bends of the river cut off by the Corps to make the Mississippi’s channel straighter and shorter, are of particular concern during a flood. In 2011, Lake Chicot (near Lake Village) and Grand Lake (near Eudora) were especially troublesome. The levee at Grand Lake had never had water against it because an old abandoned federal levee in front of it had never been breached. Farmers were working the land between the newer, larger mainline levee and the old levee. As the river rose and overtopped the old levee, large sandboils broke out on the landside of the mainline levee. To prevent any threat to the mainline levee, overnight Raborn’s crew provided advice as the levee board constructed a 6-foot dike around an area the size of two football fields to protect the levee. Raborn and his men also battled bothersome boils just 500 feet from the levee around Lake Chicot, another old channel of the Mississippi. But it wasn’t until June, when the water was receding, that they made a disturbing discovery that illustrates the hidden hazards of a flood fight. Raborn dispatched a crew to check places that had previously been overlooked during the height of the flood. “The men would say, ‘Man, there’s snakes out there!” said Raborn, “But I said, ‘I don’t care. You hack your way in there and check it out.” What they found could make anyone uncomfortable, especially someone familiar with the consequences of weak spots in the system. At the north end of Lake Chicot at the end of the oxbow, there was a slough with hundreds of sand boils. Fortunately, they were a long way from the levee. “See, that’s something that we know about now that we didn’t know about then. It’s like

a jungle down there,” said Raborn, referring to both the unpredictable nature of the determined water and the thick vines and undergrowth that his men had to wrestle with. Despite the boils, the Arkansas levees performed beautifully. Sometimes the bigger problem was dealing with all the rumors.

“It was just the unknown, what the next thing that was going to crop up would be, and how you would deal with it.” At Grand Lake, for example, “We tried to be proactive and get information out that this old frontline levee was going to breach, that it was going to top it. It was NOT going to get over the mainline levee. We tried to make sure that everyone understood that. Well, that just started things. And it was continual, ‘We heard the levee broke someplace,”

said Raborn of the rumors flying through the grapevine of citizenry and social media. Because it had been decades since the river had crept so high up the levees, most of the public didn’t know or remember just how difficult it was to predict, monitor and maintain troublesome areas during a high-water event. Sometimes it isn’t until the worst has passed that one realizes there were even more things to be concerned about. “It’s like, you know, you get a paper cut. Well, that hurts. Then you get something that’s a little bit deeper. Well the paper cut’s not so bad now. And you keep getting worse and worse cuts. Well, you’re paying attention to all this stuff you’ve had happen to you. Something else has cut you and you don’t even know it. That’s the kind of stuff that would cause you to lose sleep. Because you’re sitting here thinking, ‘Well I know there’s something out there I don’t know about,” Raborn said. It was a tough flood season, but it has made Raborn more optimistic. The flood helped the Corps identify weaknesses and deficiencies that are now being fixed. The system should be stronger for the next one. Raborn acknowledges that the flood took its toll on him, as it did countless others. But as he looked back on that frenzied spring of work and worry, he smiled. “If I had to do it over again,” he said, “I’d do it the same way.” n

Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Larry Raborn checks for problems with the levee.

THE

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THE BATTLE FOR NEW ORLEANS When the Corps opened Bonnet Carreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, the people of New Orleans threw a party. Can you really blame them? By Mary Love Fair

Photo by Jared Burleson

In the Lower Ninth Ward, old and new still sit side-by-side, years after Hurricane Katrina THE

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NEW ORLEANS, LA WITH LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN ON ONE SIDE, the Mississippi River on the other, and the Gulf of Mexico’s breath hot on its neck, New Orleans is far from easy to defend. Andrew Jackson had an easier time keeping off the British than the Army Corps of Engineers has keeping a relentless river from invading this marshy ground that rests below sea level. But with the 2005 Katrina disaster still weighing on its mind, the Corps is making one whale of an effort. In anticipation of another attack, it has lavished New Orleans with the finest hardware that nearly $15 billion in federal money can buy. The new concrete and steel defenses are almost finished, including 350 miles of levees and floodwalls, 73 non-federal pumping stations and three canal closure structures with pumps. All of this is designed to handle a 100year storm (one with a one percent chance of occurring in a given year). New Orleans sits on such perilously exposed ground that it would cost another $3.5 billion to increase its protection enough to shield the city from a Category 5 storm. To protect all of coastal Louisiana, the number surges to $32 billion. If Katrina returned today with its 28foot storm surge, two feet of rain and Category 3 winds, the Corps believes the new defenses could handle it. Water might still overtop some levees, but not nearly as much would get into the city. The new, improved levees would not erode and collapse as they did in Katrina because they have been armored to prevent that. And the water that did get into the city would be pumped out by a new, betterprotected pumping system. During Katrina, water flowing over the tops quickly eroded the earthen levees, allowing huge torrents into the city. Now, the

Corps has shielded the levees with a special coating to prevent them from crumbling. The Corps has also vastly improved its design of steel floodwalls that protect the city. These “I-walls” were vertical slabs of steel driven deep into the ground. But water pressure eroded their base and pushed them out of the way, thanks to a design flaw. The Corps developed a more advanced, more secure barrier, the “T-wall.” This time, if there were to be a rush of water, the diagonally anchored “Twall” would be able to withstand the assault, Corps engineers believe. In effect, the Corps widened the stance of the barriers, allowing them to get their feet set to withstand the rush of the water. About 12 miles east of the heart of New Orleans, the Corps has erected the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal - Lake Borgne Surge Barrier. Stretching over 1.8 miles, this concrete barrier seeks to lop off the flood surge from a hurricane. That would prevent what many critics claimed was a major cause of damage during Katrina – water surging through the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal into the heart of the city, a sort of hurricane alley. The huge concrete barrier not only protects the confluence of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, but also serves as a silent reminder of the severity of the situation. With cement walls that dwarf their builders, the barrier looks more like something you’d expect to see on a military battlefield – not a body of water so close to a major city. The sheer size of these flood works is a testament to how difficult it is to protect this place. But they worked well during Hurricane Isaac, a storm that was weaker than Katrina but still managed to dump almost two feet of rain on the city in late August. The new levees and pumps handled the deluge, passing their first serious challenge.

“It looks like it would only take an inch of rain to spill the entire Gulf on our city.”

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Photo by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

The sheer size of its floodworks is a testament to how difficult it is to protect New Orleans.

OF PAIN AND PARTIES “WE’RE BUILDING BACK.” The city’s defensive mindset is evident in these simple words from storyteller Robert Green. Twenty-five feet of water carried away not only Green’s home, but the lives

of his mother and three-year-old daughter. Green lives with the past’s presence as he motions toward the concrete steps across his yard that now lead to nothing. They stand as a reminder that New Orleans lies below enemy lines. A tour bus passes and Green smiles, wav-

ing off the suggestion that such attention is unwelcome. “I’ve gotten so much from it; the stories need to be told.” The marble monument in his front yard demands the attention of passersby, who stop to read the inscription telling the stories of the dead. In this way, Green is keeping the

past alive and helping build back the Lower Ninth Ward, devastated by Katrina. The same New Orleans culture that celebrates the dead with a party faces the challenge of a flood fight with optimism. Here, the band is still playing and the Saints keep on marchin’ in. It is hard for THE

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SETTING RECORDS The Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System is big in more than its name. It has the world’s largest drainage pump station. The 11 West Closure Complex pumps can discharge 19,140 cubic feet of water per second, enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool in less than five seconds. It has the nation’s largest sector gate, 225 feet. The Inner Harbor Navigation Canal surge barrier is the largest of its kind in the world and the largest single project ever built in Louisiana. The surge barrier required the largest continuous placement of concrete since construction of the Hoover Dam – 1,000 truckloads. Over 18 million pounds of rebar (equivalent to the metal used in 30 747’s) was used in the West Closure Complex alone. Work on the levees required the biggest deep soil mixing project in the U.S. Source: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Photo by Jared Burleson

Robert Green lost his mother and 3-year-old daughter to Katrina. THE

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outsiders to understand how natives can still “long to be in that number.” Chase Woessner, a student at Tulane Medical School, laughs as he attempts to describe a most unusual city. “It probably makes no sense to others, but the threat of another hurricane is daunting yet manageable. Honestly, we just love our city that much.” When Woessner drives to Southern Louisiana to fish, he rides the highway with the marsh leading to the Gulf on his left, and on the right, the skyline of New Orleans: the Superdome, One Shell Square, and the unmistakable Crescent City Connection, which spans the Mississippi River. “The dumbfounding, irksome thing about this viewpoint,” he said, “is that both

Bonne Carre’: The Guardian of New Orleans

the marsh and the skyline are level as a board. It looks like it would only take an inch of rain to spill the entire Gulf on our city.” Looking down at the city from a New Orleans balcony, Chase considers the threat of Katrina II. “Every time it gets extra humid at the end of the summer people start thinking ‘hurricane.’ Like 2011, when the Mississippi River rises they get nervous. But something has changed since Katrina. Whether it’s confidence in the new flood works or simply time healing old wounds, the city has started to regain much of the joie de vivre so obvious before the storm. The opening of the Bonnet Carre’ spillway in 2011 was a prime example. Bonnet Carre’ is there for nothing less than the sal-

vation of the city. Its role is to take hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of water out of the river every second and detour it into Lake Pontchartrain, relieving pressure on the city’s levees. With the river uncomfortably high, the Corps was spoiling for a fight. But New Orleans was ready for a party. The smell of sunscreen accompanied picnic baskets, checkered tablecloths, and balloons on May 9. People came from all over the city to celebrate as they watched the river that hugs their city so ferociously gush through the spillway gates. Whether for relief or sheer fun, the crowd cheered. As they say down here, through rain or sun, “Laissez les bons temps rouler.” Let the good times roll. n THE

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John Ruskey admires one of his hand-carved canoes.

THE RIVER POET The stream that sweeps 2,300 miles is a mystery to most, familiar to few and home to at least one. By: Blair Jackson

FRANTIC NEWSCASTERS, swelling water and common sense had no impact. John Ruskey slid his canoe into the Mississippi River and pushed off as water churned and rushed madly. He and author Hodding Carter IV were off to ride the record crest of the 2011 flood, fighting the bucking current all the way from Memphis to Vicksburg.   Madness, some would call it. But to John Ruskey it was a fantasy, an adventure, a story to be told again and again. This bearded, laidback man may know the river better than anyone else, and when the opportunity came to escort Carter downriver on the crest, Ruskey took it without a blink. This river is his home. Ruskey owns the QuaPaw Canoe Co. in Clarksdale. He carves canoes by hand, then uses them to take trips along the Mississippi. He and his “Mighty QuaPaws,” a group of underprivileged kids in Clarksdale, act as guides for groups wanting to experience the river. “What brought me here? The Mississippi River,” says Ruskey, leaning back against an old fabric couch, completely at ease. Tea mug in hand, he looks around his cluttered office and remembers how he got here.   THE

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Photo by Blair Jackson

After graduating from high school in 1982, he built a raft with a friend and set out from Evergreen, Colo., for an unknown destination downriver. His journey ended in Clarksdale, where he liked it and decided to stay. After working on the Mississippi Queen, playing as a musician and serving as curator of the Delta Blues Museum, Ruskey founded the QuaPaw Canoe Co. He has been breathing life into the place ever since.   The clinking of the spoon in his cup keeps beat to his story, which he tells in slow, simple pieces. The river is more than a source of income. It is Ruskey’s beginning and end. To him, the river is a home and a religion. When he talks about it, he sounds like a poet.   “It’s fulfilling, it’s rejuvenating, it’s spiritually uplifting and personally rewarding,” Ruskey sings. “The river is my church. We are missionaries for the greater church of the Lower Mississippi River.” And he laughs, but means it.   People from all over the United States come to ride with Ruskey on the river. His website, www.rivergator.org, has produced a detailed paddler’s guide to the river. Ruskey says his company aims to introduce people to the river and teach them its secrets. As long as it receives its due respect, it’s not as perilous as people think. Girls, boys, men and women get the chance to hop in a canoe, grab a paddle and propel themselves down the mightiest river in America. “The trees become your ceiling. The fire becomes your stove. The river becomes the

bathtub. The woods become the bathroom,” Ruskey says.   The company has two bases, one in Helena, Ark., and the other where Ruskey is, in Clarksdale on the Sunflower River, which connects to the Mississippi. He calls his office overlooking the river “the cave.” Strewn across a messy desk: piles of paper, an assortment of river rocks and Ruskey’s newest addition, a giant sloth bone that he found on a sandbar.    In the canoe-building room, wood shavings cover the ground and heavy strips of hollowed oak stretch for as long as 28 feet. Some canoes are aluminum, some solid wood and others a mix of the two. Ruskey calls the canoe the “perfect sailing vessel.”    Like a best friend, Ruskey also knows the river’s dark side. He describes it as unpredictable, mysterious and hard-nosed. The river is not a force to confront. It will win every time. “Some cold, windy, rainy days you feel like the river has no heart and no generosity. But then other days she is very giving and warm and expressive and spectacularly beautiful.  “You’ll never be bored. That’s one thing for sure. You’ll never be bored on the Mississippi River.”   Ruskey’s had brushes with death on the river. One time he was kayaking when a tornado jumped down from the sky and was about to pass directly overhead. He was alone, and with the storm knocking down trees and the clouds spitting hail, he did the only thing he knew to do: get in the water.    “It became my safety,” he says.   Ruskey smiles out the window, then turns back with a pressing thought. “I’m not scared of stormy weather.” And he wouldn’t be. He had already ridden the crest of the biggest flood to ever come down the Mississippi – a flood so high that many think it will never be matched. But Ruskey thinks it’s foolish to underestimate the river. His opinion is simple and direct: Of course it will come. Ruskey shrugs his shoulders. He has a quiet understanding of the river that can be maddening to any left-brain thinker. He loves its unpredictability. He respects its superiority. The Mississippi River is what it is, and that’s exactly how Ruskey thinks it should be. “It’s pretty weak on rewarding ambition,” he nods, then smiles and adds, “but it’s very rewarding with anyone who is patient and respectful.” n

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MEEK SCHOOL JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI FA R L E Y H A L L , U N I V E R S I T Y, M S 3 8 6 7 7

A DEPTH REPORT BY THE MEEK SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM AND NEW MEDIA

Left to right on front row: Blair Jackson, Margaret Ann Morgan, Kate Kenwright, Mary Love Fair, Bracey Harris, Claire Douglas THE OF Blake Johnson, Benjamin Hurston, Peyton Thigpen, Bill Rose Back row:THE 86

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