In each decade since about 1860, the Atchafalaya River had drawn off more water from the Mississippi than it had a decade before. By the late 1940’s the volume approached one-third, as the Atchafalaya widened and deepened, eroding headword, offering the Mississippi an increasingly attractive alternative, it was preparing for nothing less than absolute capture: before long it would take all of the Mississippi, and itself become the master stream. The Mississippi River with its sand and silt, has created most of Louisiana, and it could not have done so if it stayed in one channel. If it had only stayed in one channel southern Louisiana would be a long narrow peninsula reaching into the Gulf of Mexico. Always it is the rivers purpose to get …show more content…
The narrator said, “This nation has a large and powerful adversary. Our opponent could cause the United States to lose nearly all her seaborne commerce, to lose her standing as first among trading nations…. We are fighting Mother Nature…. Its’s a battle we have to fight day by day, year by year; the health of our economy depends on victory.” Coming in from the northwest, from Texas via Shreveport, the Red River had been a tributary of the Mississippi for a couple of thousands of years, until the Atchafalaya captured it and drew it away in the 1940’s. The capture of the Red River increased the Atchafalaya’s power. At the Old River we would lose the American Ruhr. The Army’s name for its operation here was Old River Control.
The corps dammed the Old River in 1963, and they wanted to kill the Atchafalaya but, the Atchafalaya was used to relieve pressure and keep New Orleans from ending up like Yucatan. It was also the source of water in swamps and bayous for the Cajun world. It supplied water to small cities and towns. So the corps were not in the right position to kill the Atchafalaya. They had to build something that would give the Atchafalaya a portion of the Mississippi, but prevent it from taking all of