Good May Come from Flooding Basin

 Doing great damage from North to South the bloated Mississippi may yet do some good

 Flooding in Atchafalaya Basin may be big help to coastal wetlands 

The flooding in the Atchafalaya Basin has ruined crops and soaked hundreds of camps, but the water could also change the swamp and bolster one of the few areas of the state’s coast that is not washing away.
Scientists who study the Basin say it’s too early to know for certain what the overall effect will be.
Wildlife, such as deer and the threatened Louisiana black bear, could take a hit, and the fast-moving flood waters could shift the landscape, eroding some areas while building up others.
But the flooding should also flush out stagnant swamp water and carry sediment down to the coast to help build new marsh.
“From our viewpoint, if the marshes could speak, they would be singing hymns of praise,” said D. Phil Turnipseed, director of the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wetlands Research Center in Lafayette. “Floods, in general, are very beneficial to wetlands on the coast.”
The swollen Atchafalaya River, combined with the Mississippi River water being diverted into the Basin at the Morganza Spillway, is moving a heavy load of sand, silt and clay though the swamp and to the coast below Morgan City.
For the past few decades, the sediment being carried by the Atchafalaya River has actually been building land in that area even as other parts of the coast wash away.
One delta has been growing at the mouth of Atchafalaya River. Another delta is spreading at the mouth of the Wax Lake Outlet, a channel off the main river that was dug in the 1940s to redirect some of the Atchafalaya River west of Morgan City to reduce the flooding threat there.
The deltas first began emerging from the water after the flood of 1973 — the last time the Morganza Spillway was opened. The current flood could mark a new period of growth, said Paul Kemp, vice president of the National Audubon Society’s Louisiana Coastal Initiative.
“It may have been building underneath there for a long time, and then it will pop up after an event like this,” Kemp said. “We would expect to see a significant pulse in the deltas after an event like this.”
The Wax Lake Delta had been growing at a rate of little more than half a square mile per year in the 1980s and 1990s, said Yvonne Allen, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers research ecologist.
Growth tapered off in the past decade, Allen said, but the new flooding could kick-start another period of expansion.
“I would expect and hope that it’s going to be delivering a lot of sediment with that water,” she said.

If we only let nature do her thing, not interfere, we'd be much better for it.

Read the rest HERE.

And so it goes.

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