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 site in poor repair. Like its sister structure the Pompton Dam, the Pequannoc Spillway was originally made entirely of timber. Constructed in the early 19th century the Pequannoc Spillway aided in navigation upriver along the Morris Canal during its almost 100 years of use. The structure was also part of a system to maintain water levels along portions of the Pompton River and Ramapo River which were at the time of their construction a part of the Morris Canal. The removal of the spillway was advocated against in the 1920s by C.C. Vermeule, Decommissioning Engineer for the Morris Canal and