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The Atchafalaya River is navigable and provides a significant industrial shipping channel for the state of Louisiana. It is the cultural heart of the Cajun Country.. The maintenance of the river as a navigable channel of the Mississippi River has been a significant project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for more than a century.
The Atchafalaya Basin, or Atchafalaya Swamp (/ ə ˌ tʃ æ f ə ˈ l aɪ ə /; Louisiana French: Atchafalaya, [atʃafalaˈja]), is the largest wetland and swamp in the United States. Located in south central Louisiana , it is a combination of wetlands and river delta area where the Atchafalaya River and the Gulf of Mexico converge.
Water diverted at Old River flows into the Atchafalaya Basin, first entering the Red River, then continuing down the Atchafalaya River to the Gulf of Mexico, bypassing Baton Rouge and New Orleans (see diagram). The Morganza Floodway, between the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya Basin nearby downstream, is normally closed. It can be opened in an ...
Water that passes the Morganza Spillway first enters the Morganza Floodway, which extends from the spillway at the Mississippi River south to the East Atchafalaya River levee. The floodway, 20 miles (32 km) long and 5 miles (8.0 km) wide, includes a stilling basin, an approach channel, an outlet channel, and two guide levees. [1]
The Atchafalaya Basin system comprises three floodways. Two of these, the West Atchafalaya Floodway and the Morganza Floodway, are at the northern end.Together with the Atchafalaya River, these floodways are designed to pass flood waters into the third component, the Lower Atchafalaya Basin Floodway, which is 833,000 acres (3,370 km 2) in size and is bounded on the north by U.S. Route 190, on ...
The river stretches from near Simmesport in the north through parts of eight parishes to the Morgan City area in the south. The Atchafalaya is unique among Louisiana basins because it has a growing delta system (see illustration) with nearly stable wetlands. The basin contains about 70% forest habitat and about 30% marsh and open water.
McCrea is famous as the location of the last levee breach or "crevasse" of the Great Flood of 1927.As the high water of that year accumulated within the Atchafalaya River to unprecedented heights, authorities were concerned that the Mississippi River itself was attempting to shift its channel into that of the Atchafalaya.
After the levees were built along the Atachafalaya River in the 1930s, the Teche and the rice farms located along the bayou suffered a drastic reduction in fresh water. Between 1976 and 1982, the United States Army Corps of Engineers built a pumping station at Krotz Springs to pump water from the Atchafalaya River into Bayou Courtableau.