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
Morganza to the Gulf to 4 in favor of the Water Resources Development Act, an enormous water projects bill containing the levee system. Congress has not passed a WRDA bill since 2000, and authorization for the Morganza project has stalled annually with it. Next WRDA will head to conference committee, where the House and the Senate will iron out any differences between their versions of the bill. Last year, WRDA died in the waning hours of the Senate stuck in conference committee. But Jerome Zeringue, executive director of the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation Board, said that the May passage of WRDA and a lack