ST MARTIN BACKWATERS RISING
Release Apr 20, 2008 -- Rising backwaters have prompted the St. martin Parish president to order boats to move slowly in residential and commercial areas lest they push water into homes and businesses. Some neighborhoods have set up sandbag levees.
The Atchafalaya River itself is well below its levee and the floodwall that protects Morgan City, but water from the river is swelling bayous and canals.
"I'm starting to have people joyriding around to see how high the water is," Parish President Guy Cormier said Friday.
On Thursday, he ordered boats on all waterway sin commerical and residential areas of lower St. Martin Parish to travel slowly enough not to raise a wake. Violation can bring up to six months in jail and a $500 fine.
Under a law written after the great flood of 1927, about one-third of the Mississippi River's water is sent down the Atchafalaya River through the Old River Control Structure. The huge weir was built to keep the Atcafalaya from capturing the Mississippi, drowning Morgan City and allowing salt water up the Mississippi past New Orleans.
Farther down the swollen Mississippi, the Army Corps of Engineers opened more bays on a major spillway in Norco, about 30 miles northwest of New Orleans. The corps has opened bays on the Bonnet Carre Spillway daily since Wenesday and spokesman Eric Hughes said it opened 25 more Saturday. That brings the open bays up to 160 of the total 380.
Opening the spillway is meant to ease pressure on area levees and improve navigation conditions for ships and barges. The river is expected to crest about three feet below the levees at New Orleans.
The corps began opening the spillway April 11. Heavy rains farther north in the waterlogged Mississippi Valley prompted the opening, the first in eleven years.
Officials are expecting the river to crest in New Orleans on Tuesday or Wednesday. However, the river is expected to drop slowly, so the spillway could remain open for a couple of weeks.
In St. Martin Parish, water was just below the shoulder of LA 70 north of Stephensville and inched toward homes along waterways in the Stephensville and Belle River areas. No residential flooding has been reported, but St. Martin officials had distributed about 30,000 sandbags, Cormier said.