Michael Luke / Eyewitness News
MORGANZA SPILLWAY, La. - For only the second time since it was constructed, the Morganza spillway was opened unleashing a violent torrent of water in an effort to relieve pressure off a swollen Mississippi River, which is at historic levels.
At 3 p.m., the first bay of the spillway -- a massive, multi-ton steel door -- was opened and water from the Mississippi River began rushing out into the Atchafalaya Basin. Within minutes of the opening as water spewed from a single bay, most of the ground that reporters and officials stood on a minutes earlier was inundated with water.
That same land that was farmland last week was 15 feet underwater less than three hours after the spillway opened.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official Col. Ed Fleming made the official announcement from the base of the spillway around 1:15 p.m. that the spillway would be opened after the river reached the crucial trigger of 1.5 million cubic feet per second in the Baton Rouge area.
Fleming said the decision was made since the crest of the river was still at least 10 days from making it to the Baton Rouge area.
"This is a historic day," said Fleming. "This is a historic day not only for the entire Mississippi River but also for the state of Louisiana."
The decision to open the spillway will take the pressure off the river as officials scramble to ease flooding chances around Louisiana's major cities, like New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
But the effort to help those major cities will come at a cost for smaller towns south of the Morganza spillway, as the corps would be willfully unleashing floodwaters on those rural towns.
A day earlier as Cindy Prejent worked feverishly to protect and sandbag her home in Gibson, La., a small, low-lying town in Terrebonne Parish that could be swamped in the waters, she asked “What gives them the right to flood us?”
“I understand it, but there are so many communities and so many farmers and so many businesses,” she said, as her home could get five feet of water from the opening of Morganza.
Before the opening, Fleming said the corps will work with towns to be impacted by water set loose through the Morganza to mitigate flooding in those areas.
"We've issued hundreds of thousands of sandbags, tens of thousands of feet of Hesco baskets in places like Butte La Rose, Morgan City and Amelia," said Fleming. "It is important to remember that we are here with these communities that are fighting this flood."
Only one bay of the 125 bays was opened at 3 p.m. Another bay was opened later in the afternoon.
Fleming said Sunday officials expect to open one to two more. The initial bay sent approximately 10,000 cubic feet per second of water cascading into the Atchafalaya Basin.
"This system is under tremendous pressure," said Maj. General Michael Walsh, head of the Mississippi River Commission. "This is still a very serious flood."
To reduce levels along the Mississippi River, which has flooded areas from the Midwest through the Mississippi Delta, Walsh said the corps has already opened two floodways -- New Madrid, a floodway in Missouri and Bonnet Carre, a spillway 30 miles from New Orleans. The Morganza spillway, which is 310 miles from New Orleans in Pointe Couppe Parish, made the third.
On May 9, crews began opening the Bonnet Carre spillway. Beginning on May 3, crews dynamited a levee at the Birds Point - New Madrid floodway, intentionally breaching the levee to relieve pressure on the river. The levee was blown open to try and save Cairo, Ill.
By the end of Saturday, corps officials said 300 of the 350 bays of the Bonnet Carre spillway would be opened, and officials don't expect to open anymore bays.
Fleming said that capacity of the Morganza is 600,000 cubic feet per second if fully opened, but he said according to projections, crews planned on only having the spillway opened at 125,000 cubic feet per second, 25 percent of capacity.
Even before crews opened the first bay of the Morganza, water from the Mississippi River could be seen coming through spaces in the bays -- a sign of the tremendous pressure on the spillway.
Once the spillway was opened, the homes of 25,000 people were put in jeopardy as water flows into the basin endangering towns in the path of the water.
Walsh said the crest on the Mississippi is currently in Arkansas. According to projections, the crest should hit the area around the Morganza on May 24 and should last 10 to 14 days, said Walsh.
Fleming expected the spillway to remain open for several weeks and added that it could be several weeks after the spillway was closed for residents to return home.
The decision to open only one bay was done so that water would not scour and damage the concrete spillway, to give people and wildlife in the area more time to leave the area, said Fleming.
Built in 1954, the Morganza spillway was last opened in 1973, when 54 bays were opened to relieve pressure on the then-bulging river.
