Morganza Spillway

(Newser) - Butte LaRose is “like a ghost town” after yesterday’s opening of the Morganza spillway , says one resident. People started clearing out their belongings last week and most were gone by today, when the water was expected. A sign outside town warns that animals, too, are likely fleeing for...

(Newser) - Water from the inflated Mississippi River gushed through a floodgate today for the first time in nearly four decades and headed toward thousands of homes and farmland in the Cajun countryside, threatening to slowly submerge the land under water up to 25 feet deep. As the gate was raised, the...

(Newser) - Louisiana—faced with the choice of flooding farmland or risking major floods in New Orleans and Baton Rouge —is preparing to open a relief valve and swamp large areas of farmland in Cajun country. The Morganza spillway is about to be opened for the first time in 38 years...