2011 Mississippi River floods feet per second just upstream from the Old River Control Structure. The US Army Corps of Engineers refers to this design goal as Project Flood. the expected flow will be on the high side, but still within that maximum capacity, assuming everything works as expected. On May 14, a single floodgate of the Morganza Spillway was opened in order to divert of water from the Mississippi River to the Atchafalaya Basin. This diversion was deemed necessary to protect levees and prevent major flooding in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, with the tradeoff of exacerbating flooding in the Atchafalaya Basin, and
Spillway Spillway A spillway is a structure used to provide the controlled release of flows from a dam or levee into a downstream area, typically the riverbed of the dammed river itself. In the United Kingdom, they may be known as overflow channels. Spillways ensure that the water does not overflow and damage or destroy the dam. Floodgates and fuse plugs may be designed into spillways to regulate water flow and reservoir level. Such a spillway can be used to regulate downstream flows – by releasing water in small amounts before the reservoir is full, operators can prevent sudden large releases