Mississippi Flooding is Effecting 2229k People, Farm Land, and XOM’s Refineries

“Nine of the 125 gates at Louisiana’s Morganza floodway opened yesterday, allowing the muddyMississippi River to pour into the Atchafalaya River basin as part of the Army Corps of Engineers strategy to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

With the gates open, the National Weather Service is predicting near-record flooding for towns along the Atchafalaya and surrounding wetlands. The Mississippi was threatening to reach to a flow rate of 1.62 million cubic feet per second unless water was diverted, putting in peril the levees at Baton Rouge, home to an estimated 229,000 people and industrial areas that include an Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) refinery, the company’s second largest U.S. facility.

“With the opening of the Morganza, we are expecting some significant rises on the Atchafalaya,” said Fred Zeigler, a weather service meteorologist in Slidell, Louisiana. “It will be the second-highest crest at Butte La Rose.”

Butte La Rose, Louisiana, is a small town at a bend on the Atchafalaya about 40 miles west of Baton Rouge. Last night residents came to the river bank to watch the rising waters, while a work gang of convicts wearing black and white striped uniforms filled sandbags under the watchful eye of armed guards.

The Atchafalaya is expected to crest at Butte La Rose on May 24 at 27 feet, Zeigler said. The record of 27.28 feet was set there on May 23, 1973. When the river rises to 22 feet, shipping will become difficult because of the twists and the turns, Zeigler said. When it reaches 26 feet, the gauge used to measure it will be underwater, he said.”

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