Designing the Bayous: The Control of Water in the Atchafalaya Basin, 1800-1995

Notes

Notes Prologue 1. The recognition came from the National Society of Professional Engineers. See Jeff Johnston, "The Swamp Expressway," Acadiana Profile, 11, 4 (1984-85 Tour Guide), p. 55. 2. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District, Technical Appendixes A, B, C, and D, vol. 2, in Atchafalaya Basin Floodway System, Louisiana: Feasibility Study, 4 vols. (New Orleans, January 1982), II:A-61, A-63, A-149, A-I53 [hereinafter cited as Feasibility Study]; Johannes L. van Beek, Karen Wicker, and Benjamin Small, A Comparison of Three Flooding Regimes, Atchafalaya Basin, Louisiana, Ecological Research Series, EPA-600/378-106 (Las Vegas, Nevada: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office or Research and Development, Environmental Monitoring and Support laboratory, 1978), p. 1; Norah Deakin Davis, The Father ofWaters: A Mississippi River Chronicle, with photographs by Joseph Holmes (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1982), p. 152; Louisiana Office ofTourism, River Trails, Bayous and Back Roads (Baton Rouge, n.p., n.d.), p. 75. 3. Davis, Father ofWaters, pp. 152-53; Louisiana Office of Tourism, River Trails, p. 75. See also Jack and Anne Rudloe, "Trouble in Bayou Country," National Geographif: 156, 3 (September 1979): 376-97; C. C. Lockwood, Atchafalaya: America's Largest River Basin Swamp (Baton Rouge: Beauregard Press, 1981), p. 8. 4. Thomas A. Becnel, The Barrow Family and the Barataria and Lafourche Canal: The Transportation Revolution in Louisiana, 1829-1925 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), pp. 2, 27-28. 5. Congressman Henry D. Larcade, Jr. recounted the story in testimony presented in U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Public Works, Subcommittee on Flood Control, Hearings on H.R. 9859, 83d Cong., 2d sess., p. 842, 21 May 1954. 6. Louisiana Office of Tourism, River Trails, p. 75. 7. Information on discharge comes from the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Fact Sheet, "Largest Rivers in the United States," Open-File Report 87-242, August 1987. "Cubic feet per second" measures the amount of water passing a cross section of the river stretching from bank to bank. At a point where the river is 500 feet wide and an average 50 feet deep, the cross section is 25,000 square feet. If water passes this point at 5 feet per second, the river carries 125,000 cfs. Put another way, 937,500 gallons of water would pass an observer's eye every second (one cfs equal 7.5 gallons per second). 8. Material on the geological history of the Atchafalaya River was obtained from Rodney A. Latimer and Charles W. Schweizer, The Atchafalaya River Study, 3 vols. (Vicksburg, Mississippi: Mississippi River Commission, 1951-1952), I: 9, 31; Harold N. Fisk, GeologU:al Investigation ofthe Atchafalaya Basin and the Problem ofMississippi River Diversion, 2 vols. (Vicksburg: Mississippi River Commission, 1952),1:8-9. 9. For some of the ideas relating to the rise of Republican Party ideology and its influence on natural resources development, see Robert Kelley, "The Context and the Notes to pages 10-17 Process: HowThey Have Changed Over Time," in Martin Reuss, ed., Water Resources Administration in the United States: Policy, Practice, and Emerging Issues (East Lansing, Michigan: American Water Resources Association and Michigan State University Press, 1993), pp. 10-22. 10. For the history of the Corps' early involvement in water resources, by far the most important book is Todd Shallat, Structures in the Stream: Water, Science, and the Rise ofthe U.S. Anny Corps ofEngineers (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994). This book may be supplemented with these other works: Daniel H. Calhoun, The American Civil Engineer: Origins and Conflicts (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1960); Forest G. Hill, Roads, Rails, and Waterways: The Army Engineers and Early Transportation (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957); Frank N. Schubert, ed., The Nation Builders: A Sesquicentennial History of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, 1838-1863, EP 870-1-37 (Fort Belvoir, Virginia: Office of History, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1988). 11. The Cajun was Mamie Louviere, who was interviewed on the NOVA program Goodbye, Louisiana, originally broadcast on the Public Broadcasting Service on 30 November 1982; copyright 1982 by the WGBH Educational Foundation, Boston. 12. A popular and insightful account of the effect of the Old River Control Structure on the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers is given in John McPhee, The Control ofNature (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989), pp. 3-92. 13. Kermit L. Hebert, The Flood Control Capabilities of the Atchafalaya Basin Floodway, rev. ed (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State...