From: John Cuccia 

On Fri, 02 Sep 2005 11:54:08 -0400, Monte Davis
 wrote:

>You won't find a better (or better-written) background on the
>Misssissippi River delta than John McPhee's _The Control of Nature_.
>In the "Atchafalaya" section, he describes the Old River Control
>project of the Army Corps of Engineers -- basically, an ongoing
>attempt to keep the Mississippi from doing what it's been doing for at
>least the last 12,000 years, namely switching every century or so
>among outlet channels in a fan that extends from the Texas border to
>Biloxi.

Also, as the river's gulf outlet gets longer it puts more pressure on that
structure, as the Mississippi's route the Gulf is about a 3rd as long
through the Atchafalaya channel as it is currently.

I believe the Corps has come close to losing that structure due to scouring
at least twice in the past 15 years.   As impressive as it is
as an engineering achievement, it is only a matter of time before it fails
and the Mississippi overwhelms, steals the Atchafalaya river channel, and
turns the current channel at New Orleans and Baton Rouge into salt water
estuaries.

If there is no other lesson learned from this, we should learn that we
cannot control natural processes by brute force, they are stronger than we
are.

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