Morganza...the name of a late nite UHF station (remember those?) horror movie host?
Or maybe a brand of shortening (remember that stuff?)?
Oh, yeah, Morganza, as in 'Morganza to the Gulf' hurricane protection levee for Terrebonne Parish, and as in "Morganza Spillway", a space dedicated to letting the waters have their way when the big rivers get full to save the cities, kind of like applying leeches to the face to prevent a problem in the groin...
Living in coastal Louisiana is becoming an annual exercise in irony, humility, blather, astonishment, surrealism and gamesmanship of the cruelist sort, a headlong pitch forward into the future, a lit cultural and economic fuse forever hissing toward....what? Gradual annihilation is what, but that's a whole nuther set of cyclopedias (remember those?)
back to Morganza...which has become the default term for the proposed levee system...never liked it, as it has nothing to do with south Louisiana, save being the place where the excess water may go; even suggested to the PowersThatB once they rename it "Terrebonne Levee System", which got a reaction of basically horror, because, as was explained, years have been spent pushing 'Morganza' and to rename it would be a disaster, etc;
So, we are opposites, polar, in that a Morganza is threatening to flood us from the North and West, and another Morganza is designed to protect us from storm surges from the Gulf;
Just another warm and sticky day on the inland coast...
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Record flood of 1973
As we are constantly reminded via every source of media that exists, the waters are rising. Every year South Louisiana gets to show the rest of the world in a high profile way something new: hurricanes, storm surges and assorted disasters man-made and otherwise, usually Gulf of Mexico in orgin.
This time it's flooding from the North. As in most of North America.
What used to be called, and maybe still is, "backwater flooding from the Atchafalaya" is threatening Terrebonne again.
Reference is made to the title above. I remember Gibson being pretty wet back then; when you could pass on the highway, there was standing water, and it was a definite hardship for the folks on Bayou Black. I also remember crawfish scuttling across Highway 90, and people shoveling them up and filling whatever could hold them to the ever-spilling brim.
Just as Cocodrie is a foreign country to many who live but a few miles away, so be Gibson to plenty in the other direction. Nonetheless, flooding is flooding, mud in your living room is still a mess.
Which calls into question some pixels in the Big Picture when it comes to flood protection and coastal restoration. Flooding is what formed the ground we stand on. And pour highways over. Levees and massive structures begot the excruciating death dance to our environment that we are are witnessing, a generation at a time.
So just how much and how long can we stave off the inevitable? Ignore nature at our own peril. Two years without a storm has been great. A dozen more would be greater. Unfortunately, to be diligent means expecting the worse, and always leaving a little bit out there"just in case" we get a Big One, with the legendary storm surge that inundates Schriever...that would complete the trifecta of the coast, the basin and the 'high land'...don't want to be any kind of harbinger, whatever the hell a harbinger is, but it's almost time to start charging the batteries and changing the fluids in the generator.
This time it's flooding from the North. As in most of North America.
What used to be called, and maybe still is, "backwater flooding from the Atchafalaya" is threatening Terrebonne again.
Reference is made to the title above. I remember Gibson being pretty wet back then; when you could pass on the highway, there was standing water, and it was a definite hardship for the folks on Bayou Black. I also remember crawfish scuttling across Highway 90, and people shoveling them up and filling whatever could hold them to the ever-spilling brim.
Just as Cocodrie is a foreign country to many who live but a few miles away, so be Gibson to plenty in the other direction. Nonetheless, flooding is flooding, mud in your living room is still a mess.
Which calls into question some pixels in the Big Picture when it comes to flood protection and coastal restoration. Flooding is what formed the ground we stand on. And pour highways over. Levees and massive structures begot the excruciating death dance to our environment that we are are witnessing, a generation at a time.
So just how much and how long can we stave off the inevitable? Ignore nature at our own peril. Two years without a storm has been great. A dozen more would be greater. Unfortunately, to be diligent means expecting the worse, and always leaving a little bit out there"just in case" we get a Big One, with the legendary storm surge that inundates Schriever...that would complete the trifecta of the coast, the basin and the 'high land'...don't want to be any kind of harbinger, whatever the hell a harbinger is, but it's almost time to start charging the batteries and changing the fluids in the generator.
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