Download or read book Designing the Bayous written by Martin Reuss and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-02 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River Basin is one of the most dynamic and critical environments in the country. It sustains the nation’s last cypress-tupelo wetland and provides a habitat for many species of animals. Endowed with natural gas and oil fields, the basin also supports a large commercial fisheries industry. Perhaps most crucial, it remains a primary component of the plan to control the Mississippi River and relieve flooding in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and other communities in the lower river valley. The continuing health of the basin is a reflection not of nature, but of the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. With levee building and clearing in the nineteenth century and damming, dredging, and floodway construction in the twentieth, the basin was converted from a vast forested swamp into a designer wetland, where human aspirations and nature maintained a precarious equilibrium. Originally published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers primarily for internal distribution, this environmental and political history of the Atchafalaya Basin is an unflinching account of the transformation of an area that has endured perhaps more human manipulation than any other natural environment in the nation. Martin Reuss provides a new preface to bring us up-to-date on the state of the basin, which remains both an engineering contrivance and natural wonder.
Download or read book Designing the Bayous written by Martin Reuss and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-02 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Louisiana’s Atchafalaya River Basin is one of the most dynamic and critical environments in the country. It sustains the nation’s last cypress-tupelo wetland and provides a habitat for many species of animals. Endowed with natural gas and oil fields, the basin also supports a large commercial fisheries industry. Perhaps most crucial, it remains a primary component of the plan to control the Mississippi River and relieve flooding in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and other communities in the lower river valley. The continuing health of the basin is a reflection not of nature, but of the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. With levee building and clearing in the nineteenth century and damming, dredging, and floodway construction in the twentieth, the basin was converted from a vast forested swamp into a designer wetland, where human aspirations and nature maintained a precarious equilibrium. Originally published by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers primarily for internal distribution, this environmental and political history of the Atchafalaya Basin is an unflinching account of the transformation of an area that has endured perhaps more human manipulation than any other natural environment in the nation. Martin Reuss provides a new preface to bring us up-to-date on the state of the basin, which remains both an engineering contrivance and natural wonder.
Download or read book Designing the Bayous written by U. S. Army Corps of Engineers and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the natural resources that bless the United States, none is more important than its water. The nation's rivers and streams provide vital navigation links, hydropower, fishing, recreation, and water for domestic, agricultural, and industrial use. At the same time, they occasionally overrun towns and farms, destroy property, threaten livelihoods, and take lives. Perhaps nowhere in the country have the conflicting purposes of water development stimulated more studies, engineering responses, and public involvement than in Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin-which includes the largest river basin swamp in North America. Since the early nineteenth century, all levels of government have been involved. The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers' part in the basin's development includes providing flood control and maintaining navigable channels. Today, the Atchafalaya Basin serves as a major floodway to convey Mississippi River water to the Gulf of Mexico. In this history, Dr. Reuss tells the complicated, but fascinating story of how local, state, and federal agencies have attempted to reconcile conflicting visions for the basin. In so doing, he illuminates the interaction of politics, technology, and environment. Though focusing on one area of the country, this book addresses many themes associated with the development of water resources throughout the United States. Part I: Assuming Responsibility * Chapter 1 - Early Flood Control Efforts, Louisiana Style * Early Settlers and River Transportation * Clearing the Streams: The Beginnings of State Aid * The First Federal Flood Control Plan * The Beginning of Federal Assistance: The Swampland Acts * Chapter 2 - Interregnum: Growing Federal Involvement * The Humphreys-Abbot Report * The Civil War and the Atchafalaya Basin * Once More, the Levees * The Federal Role Increases * Commerce and Transportation in the Atchafalaya Basin * Chapter 3 - The Outlet Question * The Mississippi River Commission and the Outlet Question * Navigation Interests and the Outlet Question * Floods and Outlets * Chapter 4 - Apres Le Deluge: The Jadwin Plan * New Remedies for Old Problems * The Special Board * The Unwinding of the Jadwin Plan * Part II: Defining Responsibility * Chapter 5 - The Politics of Engineering * The Critics and the Corps * Dredging * Private Property and Public Good: Levee Rights-of-Way * Private Property and Public Good: Flowage Easements * Chapter 6 - Louisiana and Mississippi: The Battle Over Floodways * The Markham Plan * The Overton Act * Real Estate Problems * The 1938 and 1941 Flood Control Acts * Morganza Floodway Construction * Part III: The Burdens of Responsibility * Chapter 7 - The Old River Problem * Nature Takes the Low Road * Seeking Answers * Preparing the Plan * Authorization * Construction * Post-Construction Problems * Chapter 8 - Let the Public Be Heard: Reconciling Multiple Objectives * The Setting * Coordination or Confrontation? * Recreation * Growing State Involvement * Chapter 9 - Environmental Activists and the Corps of Engineers * The National Wildlife Federation-Corps of Engineers Agreement * Institutional Arrangements and Objectives * Impasse and Reorientation * Chapter 10 - Defending the Turf * The Environmental Protection Agency's Approach * The Fish and Wildlife Service Makes Its Move * Environmental Issues, Old and New * Chapter 11 - Denouement? * Real Estate Problems Again * Political Resolution - and Irresolution * New Controversies and Steps Toward Implementation * The Uncertain Future * Afterword: A Sense of Place, A Sense of Balance * Notes * Bibliography
Download or read book Steamboats on Louisiana s Bayous written by Carl A. Brasseaux and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an extraordinary feat of research and intrepid historical navigation, Carl A. Brasseaux and Keith P. Fontenot serve as guides through the labyrinthian and often harrowing world of Louisiana bayou steamboat journeys of the mid to late nineteenth century. The bayou country's steamboat saga mirrors in microcosm the tale of America's most colorful -- and most highly romanticized -- transportation era. But Brasseaux and Fontenot brace readers with a boldly revisionist picture of the opulent Mississippi River floating palaces: stripped-down, utilitarian freight-haulers belching smoke from twin stacks, churning through shallow swamps and narrow tributary streams, and encountering such hazards as shoals, sawyers, stumps, highwater and dry-bed seasons, and the remains of vessels claimed by those treacheries. For decades, steamboats transported goods, passengers, and mail between New Orleans and south Louisiana's vibrant interior agricultural region, bearing testimony to the resourcefulness, ingenuity, and tenacity of crews in conquering the challenges posed by a forbidding environment. Brasseaux and Fontenot marshaled a monumental array of information, including sources long-buried in courthouses, private collections, and the records of the Army Corps of Engineers. They offer data on some five hundred steamboats, keelboats, and barges known to have operated in the bayou country. This book is the first major study of a fascinating slice of the steamboat industry, showcasing a trade critically important to New Orleans's prosperity but largely forgotten in southern historiography until now. Encompassing economic, social, transportation, and environmental history, it captures the period just before the iron horse emerged as America's undisputed master of inland conveyance.
Download or read book Beyond Control written by James F. Barnett and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beyond Control reveals the Mississippi as a waterway of change, unnaturally confined by ever-larger levees and control structures. During the great flood of 1973, the current scoured a hole beneath the main structure near Baton Rouge and enlarged a pre-existing football-field-size crater. That night the Mississippi River nearly changed its course for a shorter and steeper path to the sea. Such a map-changing reconfiguration of the country's largest river would bear national significance as well as disastrous consequences for New Orleans and towns like Morgan City, at the mouth of the Atchafalaya River. Since 1973, the US Army Corps of Engineers Control Complex at Old River has kept the Mississippi from jumping out of its historic channel and plunging through the Atchafalaya Basin to the Gulf of Mexico. Beyond Control traces the history of this phenomenon, beginning with a major channel shift around 3,000 years ago. By the time European colonists began to explore the Lower Mississippi Valley, a unique confluence of waterways had formed where the Red River joined the Mississippi, and the Atchafalaya River flowed out into the Atchafalaya Basin. A series of human alterations to this potentially volatile web of rivers, starting with a bend cutoff in 1831 by Captain Henry Miller Shreve, set the forces in motion for the Mississippi's move into the Atchafalaya Basin. Told against the backdrop of the Lower Mississippi River's impending diversion, the book's chapters chronicle historic floods, rising flood crests, a changing strategy for flood protection, and competing interests in the management of the Old River outlet. Beyond Control is both a history and a close look at an inexorable, living process happening now in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Rivers by Design written by Karen M. O'Neill and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-03 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States has one of the largest and costliest flood control systems in the world, even though only a small proportion of its land lies in floodplains. Rivers by Design traces the emergence of the mammoth U.S. flood management system, which is overseen by the federal government but implemented in conjunction with state governments and local contractors and levee districts. Karen M. O’Neill analyzes the social origins of the flood control program, showing how the system initially developed as a response to the demands of farmers and the business elite in outlying territories. The configuration of the current system continues to reflect decisions made in the nineteenth century and early twentieth. It favors economic development at the expense of environmental concerns. O’Neill focuses on the creation of flood control programs along the lower Mississippi River and the Sacramento River, the first two rivers to receive federal flood control aid. She describes how, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, planters, shippers, and merchants from both regions campaigned for federal assistance with flood control efforts. She explains how the federal government was slowly and reluctantly drawn into water management to the extent that, over time, nearly every river in the United States was reengineered. Her narrative culminates in the passage of the national Flood Control Act of 1936, which empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build projects for all navigable rivers in conjunction with local authorities, effectively ending nationwide, comprehensive planning for the protection of water resources.
Download or read book Two Centuries of Experience in Water Resources Management written by John Lonnquest and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Southern Waters written by Craig E. Colten and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2014-10-13 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water has dominated images of the South throughout history, from Hernando de Soto's 1541 crossing of the Mississippi to tragic scenes of flooding throughout the Gulf South after Hurricane Katrina. But these images tell only half the story: as urban, industrial, and population growth create unprecedented demands on water in the South, the problems of pollution and water shortages grow ever more urgent. In Southern Waters: The Limits to Abundance, Craig E. Colten addresses how the South -- in an environment fraught with uncertainty -- can navigate the twin risks of too much water and not enough. From the arrival of the first European settlers, the South's inhabitants have pursued a course of maximum exploitation and control of the area's plentiful waters, investing widely in wetland drainage and massive flood-control projects. Disputes over southern waterways go back nearly as far: obstruction of fish migration by mill dams prompted new policies to protect aquatic life as early as the colonial era. Colten argues that such conflicts, which have heightened dramatically since the explosive urbanization of the mid-twentieth century, will only become more frequent and intense, making the shift toward sustainable use a national imperative. In tracing the evolving uses and abuses of southern waters, Colten offers crucial insights into the complex historical geography of water throughout the region. A masterful analysis of the ways in which past generations harnessed and consumed water, Southern Waters also stands as a guide to adapting our water usage to cope with the looming shortage of this once-abundant resource.
Download or read book Divine Providence written by Charles A. Camillo and published by Department of the Army. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a transparent depiction of the 2011 flood within the Mississippi River and Tributaries footprint. It also provides necessary historical context for greater understanding of key features of the project. It is the story of prudent foresight, heroic actions, agonizing decisions, and extreme personal sacrifice. On cover and on dust jacket: Listening. Inspecting, Partnering, Engineering. This print product is also available in print paperback format with ISBN: 9780160933431 that can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-022-00364-9 Related products: Federal Reinsurance for Disasters can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/052-070-07346-2 Toward a Unified Military Response: Hurricane Sandy and the Dual Status Commander can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-000-01147-8 Home Builder's Guide to Coastal Construction can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/064-000-00055-1 Floods resources collection can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/environment-nature/natural-environment... Hurricanes, Typhoons & Tsunamis product collection can be found here: https: //bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/environment-nature/natural-environment..."
Download or read book Divine Providence written by Charles A. Camillo and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Teche written by Shane K. Bernard and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shane K. Bernard's Teche examines this legendary waterway of the American Deep South. Bernard delves into the bayou's geologic formation as a vestige of the Mississippi and Red Rivers, its prehistoric Native American occupation, and its colonial settlement by French, Spanish, and, eventually, Anglo-American pioneers. He surveys the coming of indigo, cotton, and sugar; steam-powered sugar mills and riverboats; and the brutal institution of slavery. He also examines the impact of the Civil War on the Teche, depicting the running battles up and down the bayou and the sporadic gunboat duels, when ironclads clashed in the narrow confines of the dark, sluggish river. Describing the misery of the postbellum era, Bernard reveals how epic floods, yellow fever, racial violence, and widespread poverty disrupted the lives of those who resided under the sprawling, moss-draped live oaks lining the Teche's banks. Further, he chronicles the slow decline of the bayou, as the coming of the railroad, automobiles, and highways reduced its value as a means of travel. Finally, he considers modern efforts to redesign the Teche using dams, locks, levees, and other water-control measures. He examines the recent push to clean and revitalize the bayou after years of desecration by litter, pollutants, and invasive species. Illustrated with historic images and numerous maps, this book will be required reading for anyone seeking the colorful history of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. As a bonus, the second part of the book describes Bernard's own canoe journey down the Teche's 125-mile course. This modern personal account from the field reveals the current state of the bayou and the remarkable people who still live along its banks.
Download or read book An Everglades Providence written by Jack E. Davis and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles the suffragist, feminist, and environmentalist who fought for the preservation and protection of the Everglades and won the battle that turned it into a national wilderness area.
Download or read book Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom written by Robert H. Gudmestad and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2011-10-24 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom Robert Gudmestad offers new insights into the remarkable and significant history of transportation and commerce in the antebellum South. He examines the wide-ranging influence of steamboats on the Southern economy. From carrying cash crops to market, to contributing to slave productivity, increasing the flexibility of labor, and connecting southerners to overlapping orbits of regional, national, and international markets, steamboats not only benefitted slaveholders and northern industries but also affected cotton production.
Download or read book A World of Rivers written by Ellen Wohl and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far from being the serene, natural streams of yore, modern rivers have been diverted, dammed, dumped in, and dried up, all in efforts to harness their power for human needs. But these rivers have also undergone environmental change. The old adage says you can’t step in the same river twice, and Ellen Wohl would agree—natural and synthetic change are so rapid on the world’s great waterways that rivers are transforming and disappearing right before our eyes. A World of Rivers explores the confluence of human and environmental change on ten of the great rivers of the world. Ranging from the Murray-Darling in Australia and the Yellow River in China to Central Europe’s Danube and the United States’ Mississippi, the book journeys down the most important rivers in all corners of the globe. Wohl shows us how pollution, such as in the Ganges and in the Ob of Siberia, has affected biodiversity in the water. But rivers are also resilient, and Wohl stresses the importance of conservation and restoration to help reverse the effects of human carelessness and hubris. What all these diverse rivers share is a critical role in shaping surrounding landscapes and biological communities, and Wohl’s book ultimately makes a strong case for the need to steward positive change in the world’s great rivers.
Download or read book The Place with No Edge written by Adam Mandelman and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2020-04-08 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Place with No Edge, Adam Mandelman follows three centuries of human efforts to inhabit and control the lower Mississippi River delta, the vast watery flatlands spreading across much of southern Louisiana. He finds that people’s use of technology to tame unruly nature in the region has produced interdependence with—rather than independence from—the environment. Created over millennia by deposits of silt and sand, the Mississippi River delta is one of the most dynamic landscapes in North America. From the eighteenth-century establishment of the first French fort below New Orleans to the creation of Louisiana’s Coastal Master Plan in the 2000s, people have attempted to harness and master this landscape through technology. Mandelman examines six specific interventions employed in the delta over time: levees, rice flumes, pullboats, geophysical surveys, dredgers, and petroleum cracking. He demonstrates that even as people seemed to gain control over the environment, they grew more deeply intertwined with—and vulnerable to—it. The greatest folly, Mandelman argues, is to believe that technology affords mastery. Environmental catastrophes of coastal land loss and petrochemical pollution may appear to be disconnected, but both emerged from the same fantasy of harnessing nature to technology. Similarly, the levee system’s failures and the subsequent deluge after Hurricane Katrina owe as much to centuries of human entanglement with the delta as to global warming’s rising seas and strengthening storms. The Place with No Edge advocates for a deeper understanding of humans’ relationship with nature. It provides compelling evidence that altering the environment—whether to make it habitable, profitable, or navigable —inevitably brings a response, sometimes with unanticipated consequences. Mandelman encourages a mindfulness of the ways that our inventions engage with nature and a willingness to intervene in responsible, respectful ways.
Download or read book The Journal of Southern History written by Wendell Holmes Stephenson and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes section "Book reviews."
Download or read book Engineer Update written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
