Flood control the Metro Area, resulting in the inundation of approximately 50 percent of the metropolitan area, ranging from a few inches to twenty feet in coastal communities. The Morganza Spillway provides a method of diverting water from the Mississippi River when a river flood threatens New Orleans, Baton Rouge and other major cities on the lower Mississippi. It is the largest of a system of spillways and floodways along the Mississippi. Completed in 1954, the spillway has been opened twice, in 1973 and in 2011. In an act of successful flood prevention, the federal government offered to buy out flood-prone properties
Pequannoc Spillway which lies on the Pompton River. The Pequannoc Spillway is an early 20th-century concrete spillway over 270 feet wide, equal in girth to the Great Falls of Paterson located along the Pompton River a quarter-mile south of the Pompton dam and associated guard bank in Pequannock Township's Aquatic Park. The dam is a run-of-the-river spillway, which traverses the width of the river and at normal water elevation allows water to spill over its face. The structure is 22 feet tall, though possesses only an 8-inch over 3 foot grade on the upstream side. An associated guard house sits near the