The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1920-11-22
THE MISSISSIPPI OUTLET.
River Is Seeking New One Which lg
nores New Orleans.

The Mississippi river is seeking a
new channel to the sea, nearly 100
miles west Of its present course. APP
parently tired of being confined be-
| tween high walls of earth, made to run
deep, and work hard through the semi
tropic miles from Cairo to the gulf,
the Father of Waters is slowly but
surely cutting his way through the
Red and the Atchafalaya rivers down
to the Gulf of Mexico. and. ITO help
himself in finding this new channel he
is just as slowly and surely filling his
present channel with a river made dam
Of silt, a bit below the mouth of the
Red river.
Prom stream barely Is feet wide
in 1910, the Atchafalaya has gorged on
the waters of the Mississippi until it is
now nearly LOO feet wide, 40 feet
deep, and possessed of a current some
Is per cent faster than that of the
Mississippi river at the same distance
from the gulf.
But the most serious part of the
whole matter is the fact that the Fa-
Their of Waters, moving his channel 100
miles westward, calmly ignores city
OF nearly 100000 inhabitants, the main.
port of the Mississippi valley, which
sits on his banks, 100 miles from Gulf
'of Mexico. There is, it is true another
city on the Atchafalaya, Just where
the new course the Mississippi is seek
ing runs into Atchafalaya bay. the city
of New Orleans has no intention of
yielding to Morgan City, and allowing
the commerce of the Mississippi valley
to flow down new channel, past a
new port. making useless more than
$l50,000000 worth of public utilities,
port improvements, harbor facilities
and private industries. just because a
little thing like a river, half a mile
wide and 100 feet deep. has decided to
change its channel for q shorter one
"The remedy in my opinion says
Captain l.. Y. Cooley, a Mississippi
river captain and boat owner. sis TO
close the mouth of the Red river, com
polling it to flow to the sea down the
course of the AtehafaIaya. and COM
pletely separate both the Red and the
Atchafalaya from the Mississippi riv- ,
er, To do this, however, il must be I'M
derstood that the Red and Atchafalaya
rivers and the Bayou Terrebonne were
once mouths of the Mississippi, and |
that the closing of these streams will |
force a tremendously greater volume |
of water than now down through the |
leves of the main channel of the Mis- |
sissippi past New Orleans to the Gulf |
of Mexico. If these streams are di- |
vorced from the Mississippi. commerce
into them still can be served from
the Mississippi to the Red Ouachita
and Atchafalaya rivers and the Bayou
ferrebonne, through the Plaquemine
locks at Donaldsonville."
The opponents of the plan to divorce
the Red and Atchafalaya from the
Mississippi claim the danger to New |
Orleans would be greater if the entire |
stream of the Mississippi were con
fined to its levee walled present chan.
mel than if part of those waters were al
lowed to seek the sea by way of the
Red and Atchafalaya rivers They,
therefore. would seem 10 advocate that
control be placed on the main river,
so that only a certain part of its wa
tiers could flow through the new chan
mel, maintaining enough through the
pr - channel to provide for the com.
merce of New Orleans, without putting
undue strain on the levees, or endan.
gering the city
This plan, however, takes no cogni-
zance of the flooding of between 1000
and 5000 square miles of arabic, cul-
tivated land, in eight parishes, with
loss of millions in potential
or actual production every year
through the havoc wrought by these
flood waters Of the Mississippi beingI
allowed to go out through the Red and
the Atchafalays.
Another plan provides for a canal
connecting the Mississippi and the At
through which the flow of
the food waters of the Mississippi
could be controlled. This scheme would
save both the farming lands and the
city of New Orleans, would increase
the commerce on the Atchafalaya,
down past Morgan City, which prob
ably would become a port comparable
with Mobile, and still would leave the
main channel flowing clear past New
Orleans. and out through the jetties to
The sea
Several engineers, who are investi-
eating the Mississippi's attempt to
change its course, are of the opinion
that one solution would be to straight
IN the course of the Mississippi from
New Orleans to the sea. while still an
other idea, which has been preached,
Is to cut a canal from a point opposite I
New Orleans through the Arab
'wamps, straight TO the Gulf of Next I
Oh II. Dunn. in the December Pop
liar Mechanics magazine.