The Control of Nature

McPhee describes a long, luxurious towboat known as the Mississippi that inspects the navigation lock and hears complaints at other points along the river, along with picking up passengers. Major General Thomas Sands commandeers the vessel. The vessel’s boat captains or river pilots gather in the pilothouse of the ship. Jorge Cano is a local pilot temporarily helping the regular pilots navigate the Atchafalaya, as the Atchafalaya’s water levels can be as much as 20 feet lower than the Mississippi River’s.

McPhee discusses the Mississippi River Commission and its president, General Sands; the Commission is legally obligated to conduct these inspection trips. Most of the Commission consists of non-military civilian personnel, though there are a few military officers like Sands. It’s unclear to McPhee—and the people he interviews—why the Army is still involved in the Mississippi River’s navigation lock system. The Army originally became involved in the river system in order to prevent another instance like the War of 1812, during which the British Army attacked New Orleans through the Gulf Coast. To fortify US defenses against a naval invasion, Congress requested that the Army monitor the Mississippi River to improve navigation on the river.

The author notes Sands’s physical prowess, militaristic outlook, educational background, and work history in the Army. Sands now oversees the division of the Army Corps that spans from Missouri to the Gulf Coast.

Millions of people depend on the Old River, and the Army Corps must balance the competing interests of farmers, fishermen, and others who want the Corps to manipulate the water in different ways according to the water level and the saltwater-to-freshwater ratio. Although people consider the Atchafalaya to be quite dangerous, McPhee compares the river to a “big alligator in a low slough, with time on its side, waiting—waiting to outwait the Corps of Engineers” (24). Humans, however, don’t have the luxury of time on their side.

McPhee speaks to a few engineers on the towboat, who state that the Red River used to flow in both directions—including into the Mississippi—but then began to flow into the increasingly powerful Atchafalaya. The Army’s intervention—through the man-made structures on the Old River—is the only mechanism preventing the dominant Atchafalaya from decimating the Old River. One of the engineers concedes that the structures are not foolproof—they can fail, almost certainly dooming the Mississippi River to Atchafalaya’s capture.

By 1963—a decade after the control structures on the Old River were implemented—the Corps had effectively declared victory in its management of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. In the winter of 1973, river levels rose to higher-than-normal levels. The levees on the river were unable to contain the water, so the Army added sandbags and other makeshift barriers to the levees. A professor of civil engineering, Raphael G. Kazmann, walked on the man-made control structure on the Old River and found it dangerously unstable.

A hole—hidden underneath the water—developed on the side of the control structure. LeRoy Dugas or “Dugie” recounts his memories of the 1973 flood. In order to preserve the control structure, he and his coworkers were unable to close any of the gates to minimize the floodwaters. Dugie discovered that the foundations of the guide wall—part of the control structure—had totally eroded. The Army Corps began to see the limits of its control.

McPhee dives into the history of the water in the Mississippi River Valley. Indigenous people understood the turbulent nature of the waters, which flooded the land. As French colonizers conquered the area and wished to establish permanent farming settlements, however, they realized they must reign in the power of the Mississippi River. The first houses in New Orleans were built on levees, which the residents were supposed to raise; this method of mandating residents to raise their own levees proves to be ineffective. Entrepreneur Henry Shreve, best known for inventing the Mississippi steamboat, appeared on the scene in the 1800s. He observed that trees in the river obstructed navigation, and so he uprooted the trees with the permission of Army engineers. There was a loop on the river that steamboats had trouble navigating, so he cut off the loop, thus speeding up the Mississippi and increasing water flow into the Atchafalaya. The water departing from the Mississippi began to flow through a new section that became the Old River. 

The more the levees constrain the river’s movement, the more damage the river does when water tears through a break in the levees—known as a crevasse. In 1850, Congress passed the Swamp and Overflow Land Act, which sold swampland in Louisiana and elsewhere to pay for the levees. As the levees restricted the river’s outlets and the water rose ever higher, people wondered if even the levees could hold back the mighty waters. Engineers began to debate the merits of creating a network of reservoirs, floodways, and dams that could contain and distribute the water during floods. At this time, the Army Corps had no control over the levee system, which states and districts managed on a patchwork basis. Numerous floods occurred, and the levees failed multiple during the 1860s. In 1879 Congress established the Mississippi River Commission, which granted control over the river system to the Corps and left it up to the Corps to determine how best to prevent floods. The Corps was not in favor of creating dams and spillways, maintaining that levees were the best option.

James B. Eads, whom McPhee calls “probably the most brilliant engineer who has ever addressed his attention to the Mississippi River” (38), built jetties at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which led to a narrowing of the river’s currents and deepened the channel so that ships could pass through it. Eads’s work buoyed the Corps’ belief that the levees alone could maintain the river levels. Mark Twain—the famous author, who was a boatman at the time—criticized the notion that man could tame the Mississippi River. At first, slaves worked on the levees; after the end of slavery, immigrants carried on the work. In 1927, a flood—brought about by the confining power of the levees—destroyed bridges and killed hundreds of people, though New Orleans was spared.  

By 1927, the Corps realized that the levees exacerbated the problem of flooding. Congress doled out $300 million in the Flood Control Act of 1928. This money set up the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project, which built additional levees, raised the existing ones, and used dams to contain the river. The project also acknowledged the river’s strength by building gates in levees—spillways or floodways—that could open during flood season and guide the water down the river to the Gulf Coast. The first such spillway, constructed in 1931, was Bonnet Carre north of New Orleans. Water diverted from Bonnet Carre into a lake—thus bypassing the city of New Orleans and protecting it from flooding—on the way to the Gulf.

However, the main floodway for the Mississippi was the Atchafalaya. Atchafalaya’s southern section contained the largest river swamp in North America, so it could store ample amounts of water. Therefore, the Corps built structures to direct water toward Atchafalaya Bay, including a three-tiered floodway system near Old River in the northern section of Atchafalaya. This floodway became known as the West Atchafalaya Floodway. The Corps also constructed the Morganza Floodway.

The Corps’s designs kept Old River—the only tributary of the Mississippi to remain untouched and natural—open. The Corps was aware of the threat that the Atchafalaya posed to the Mississippi, so it set up the Old River Control system in 1954 and raised the levees. However, the levees of the 1950s were unsuitable by the 1970s, as new construction developments all over the country unintentionally led to increased drain-off and excess water heading toward Louisiana, producing the great flood of 1973. A third of the Mississippi flowed into the Atchafalaya at this time, but if it weren’t for the Old River Control, that number would be closer to 70%. The Corps’s division commander, Major General Charles Noble, worried about the stability of the Old River Control during these violent floods. The soybean farmers near the Morganza Floodway worried about their crops being flooded, and so they asked the Corps not to open the Floodway. The Corps, however, decided to open the Floodway gates to relieve some of the pressure on the Old River Control, a plan that became a high-priority project for the Corps.

The Corps worked to retain control, even though leaving the gates open took away its control over the river. Men in boats began to drop heavy balls in the river to detect holes in Old River Control. On the whole, however, the Corps remained confident. McPhee quotes a Corps general who said at the time, “The Corps of Engineers can make the Mississippi River go anywhere the Corps directs it to go” (50). The Corps built a replica model of the Old River to better predict flood rates and project repairs needed. Reinforcements to the Old River Control—to the tune of $500 million—led to the reinforced, more developed Old River Control Auxiliary Structure. While the Corps remains confident in its ability to contain the Mississippi River through the Old River Control, geologists point out that the Atchafalaya’s capture of the Mississippi is almost certain to occur as the Mississippi naturally turns toward the west and as floods grow stronger. 

McPhee returns to the towboat (also named Mississippi), which has run aground on a sandbar in the river. He re-introduces General Sands, the Corps’ division commander; John Dugger, the boat’s pilot; and Jorge Cano, the local contact pilot. Dugger responds to the sandbar by cutting the boat’s engines, allowing the river’s currents to naturally move the boat around the sandbar. McPhee asks Sands and others about the possibility of the Atchafalaya overtaking the Mississippi River outside of the Old River Control. The men are uncertain, and they express even less faith in the ability of the newly constructed auxiliary control structure to withstand the Atchafalaya.

Sands wonders what southern Louisiana would be like had humans not settled there. He answers his own question by stating that nature and men cannot coexist together in this space. In that scenario, McPhee imagines that the entire area would be covered in sediment and water due to flooding. Until the 1900s, the sediment deposits created a land-building process that outweighed the floodwaters, but now, the land gains have been negative for nearly a century. Rising water between the levees leads to a loss of land behind the levees, and the Mississippi delta plain becomes isolated from its surroundings by the levees. Half of New Orleans now rests beneath the sea level by as much as 15 feet. The city’s wealthier residents live on the higher ground, and the poorer residents live in the lower-elevation areas, which are more prone to flooding.

So much rain falls on New Orleans that it could form a lake, but the city pumps out the water, depleting the city’s water table. When the city drains marshland for development, the ground shrinks as well in a process known as subsidence. Subsidence makes the ground underneath homes unstable, leading the property to sink several feet, even as the house—propped up on slabs—remains in the same place.

McPhee writes that the “river goes through New Orleans like an elevated highway” (61). There are serious inadequacies in the levees in New Orleans. Water levels are higher in New Orleans, and the levees tend to sink as well. Due to the Corps’s intervention, erosion reduces the size of the coastal marshes, and large swathes of Louisiana disappear each year. Creating canals to oil and gas sites also increases the loss of land. This loss of land exacerbates storm surges around New Orleans, so the Corps must build levees all around New Orleans. The author speaks with a geologist, Sherwood Gagliano, who tells McPhee that we cannot restore nature to its former state. Gagliano urges the Corps to divert water to offset the loss of nutrients and sediments due to the levees. Professor Kazmann is less optimistic about the possibility of saving the Louisiana coast. Either way, the Corps is unwilling to give up, and it adjusts its strategy in response to nature’s changes. 

The author turns once more to the towboat known as the Mississippi and notes that it has made it halfway down the river. It is humid outside, so most people onboard remain indoors. Wealthy civilians on the ship play a game of cards. One of these civilians is Oliver Houck, the former general counsel of the National Wildlife Federation. Houck discusses his concerns with General Sands—particularly his concern that the military, through the Corps, is taking on an unusually political role in the region. Sands, in defense, states that Houck’s neighborhood would be flooded were it not for the Corps.

McPhee recalls traveling into the Atchafalaya swamp for the first time in 1980 with Charles Frying, a professor of landscape architecture at Louisiana State University. McPhee describes how silt is overflowing into the Atchafalaya swamp, creating new land. This creates a question of ownership of the new land, as three-quarters of the Atchafalaya falls under private ownership. These private owners want access to the resources underneath the bayou, such as oil. The various parties—such as the Corps and fishermen—have devised a compromise to suit all their interests when it concerns the biggest river swamp in North America.

McPhee discusses the traditional Cajun way of life in the swamp, which persists in the modern era in the form of a multi-million-dollar fishing and crawfish industry. He meets a Cajun crawfisherman named Mike Bourque. Through his travels with Bourque and Dave Soileau—Bourque’s brother-in-law—McPhee details the process of catching crawfish. Oil companies own parts of the swamp, and fishermen have been arrested for trespassing on their property. Bourque complains that the water is not muddy enough for catching crawfish, who get hungry when the water is muddier, and blames the Corps for not distributing more water in the Mississippi. Bourque says that he has never heard of the towboat Mississippi, which allows civilians to come onboard and air their grievances with the Corps, but he maintains that the Corps knows about the crawfishermen’s grievances. He believes the Corps sides with fishermen raising crawfish in artificial ponds, who want lower water levels. Bourque surprises McPhee when he states that he approves of the levees, because they confine crawfish to certain areas and make them easier to fish. 

The men onboard the towboat debate what will occur should the Atchafalaya capture the Mississippi. Oliver Houck tells others onboard, “When nature shifts, man shifts” (78), noting that the oil and gas industries will likely move to the basin. They call Morgan City near the Atchafalaya the “new New Orleans” (78). Morgan is a small town behind a 22-foot-high wall designed to prevent flooding, as water surrounds the town on all sides. General Sands receives frequent complaints from residents—such as Doc Brownell—that the Corps ought to do more to protect Morgan City, including creating an extension of the levee. Brownell speaks firmly of his community’s right to exist in the middle of a floodplain. The artificial designs of humans blend in with the natural behavior of the environment in the floodplains surrounding Morgan City. McPhee describes stuffed alligators in Brownell’s home. He details the history of industry in Morgan City, including the oyster and shrimp businesses and cypress tree sawmills. 

McPhee introduces a Corps picket boat captain named Kent. Kent defends Old River Control by diverting barges that have broken loose, which damage the Control if they’re taken in by the powerful currents of the Atchafalaya and crash into the Control’s gates. After reflecting on the number of barges that crash into the Control Structure, General Sands concludes that the structure is ill-suited to its location. Drift—or big logs—also crash into the structure’s anchoring cables. However, a geologist, Fred Smith, says that the Corps will maintain the Control Structure in its present location for economic reasons.