In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Afterword A Sense of Place, A Sense of Balance THE ATCHAFALAYA BASIN has essentially become a "designer wedand," a monument to human contrivance and ingenuity. Like so many other places in the world-European woodlands, California's Central Valley, refurbished beaches along the Atlantic Coast, or the manicured English landscape-its "natural look" results from a heavy dose of technology. Indeed, within the basin it is impossible to separate human and natural impacts. An enormously powerful and sophisticated technological system has dramatically altered the basin's natural water flow, affecting both water quality and quantity. The technological system can be traced back to the eighteenth century, when self-styled engineers did not so much manipulate the Atchafalaya Basin as tinker with it. They built levees a few feet above bank level that offered a small, and temporary, measure of flood relief. Improvisation continued into the early nineteenth century when snagging and clearing operations complemented levee building. Unfortunately, these early efforts often proved futile. Bars and rafts reformed ; inadequate levees failed. Nevertheless, the work continued. Untrained property owners were not the only improvisers. State and federal engineers also resorted to craft and imagination in lieu of either empirical knowledge or scientific theory. Political considerations sometimes dictated their ad hoc approach as much as did engineering intuition or systematic planning. No better example can be given than the mid-nineteenth century Louisiana state engineers who endured both nature's whimsy and legislative caprice while trying to clear the state's waterways. Even earlier, in the 1830s, on the Mississippi River, Henry Shreve, an Army Corps of Engineers employee, made his cutoff at Turnbull Bend which significantly increased the likelihood that the Mississippi would eventually flow in the Atchafalaya's channel. Although arguably the most consequential for the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, Shreve's decision was only one of myriad questionable navigation "improvements." Many of these efforts demonstrated that a mix of good intentions and inadequate knowledge can hamper navigation and flood control as surely as sandbars and river rapids do. Designing the Bayous After the Civil War and Reconstruction, the federal government, urged on by Louisiana interests, assumed greater responsibility for flood control and navigation on the Mississippi River. After its establishment in 1879, the Mississippi River Commission, acting through the Corps of Engineers, built revetment and contraction works, constructed sill dams in the Atchafalaya River, dredged, and eventually built levees to complement those that states and local levee districts had constructed. Although the MRC developed a plan for improving flood control and navigation on the Mississippi River, without explicit congressional authorization it did not develop a flood control plan for the entire lower Mississippi basin. That did not happen until after the disastrous flood of 1927. The 1928 Flood Control Act reflected Progressive era emphases on basinwide planning and federal involvement. Flood control planning would not he left to the mercy of local politics and diverse engineering designs. Instead, Congress authorized the Corps of Engineers to develop a regional, multistate concept based on hydrologic boundaries, not political borders. In this grand scheme, nature determined the intertwined destinies of the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers. However, the Corps of Engineers assured that the rivers' technological systems would also be coupled-in a way that clearly subordinated the interests of the Atchafalaya Basin to those of the Mississippi River. After passage of the 1928 Flood Control Act, politicians, engineers, and floodway residents strove to define the appropriate responsibilities of the federal government. Although the Mississippi River and Tributaries flood control project injected millions of dollars into states and local communities and created vitally important jobs during the Depression, the project also threatened the land, income, and birthright of hundreds of landowners. Consequently, federal flood control in the lower Mississippi delta raised complaints from the day Congress passed the 1928 act. Technical engineering questions stirred controversy, but real estate issues generated the most passion. Landowners in the floodways pleaded for relief from purportedly unfair attempts to restrict their rights, and their appeals invariably found sympathetic ears among powerful southern lawmakers, especially Senator John Overton. Along with Representative Will Whittington, Overton carefully monitored the Corps' activities; and the Corps expended considerable energy and time to reconcile and satisfy the conflicting demands of these politicians. The new real estate plans, in turn, dramatically affected the engineering approach and demonstrated that in this country not even the desire to control nature can easily overcome the desire-the right many would say-to own land. [3.14.142.115...

Share