Why the US Gov Reshapes the Mississippi River

Shreve was involved with many river 'engineering' projects with unintended consequences. Probably the biggest was him clearing out a massive ancient log dam on the Atchafalaya River known as the Great Raft. With the dam cleared, the river started to flow again and cut much deeper which probably was a major contributing factor to the issues described in this video.

i love when my home state of Louisiana only ever gets media coverage for how much of an ecological nightmare it is

I am 8 seconds into this video and “the Mississippi River dumps it’s Mississippi juice into the ocean right here” is a phrase I was NOT ready to hear this morning

So if you zoom out to time scales of 5,000 years or so, the Mississippi river is / always was going to find a way to move into the Atchafalaya basin anyhow. Regardless of what Shreve may have done at some point. The Old River control structure alone will not be able to keep it in channel forever. Some other leak somewhere else is going to inevitably spurt out, because the Atchafalaya basin is a shorter and steeper path to the Gulf right now. If Uncle Sam wants to keep the river in channel long term, it's gonna have to keep plugging holes. This is also why Louisiana has a really bad "coastal erosion" problem. By keeping the river in channel, the river has built the current Mississippi delta way out into the Gulf of Mexico, and it's dumping all that sediment into deep water where it's not doing anything. Meanwhile, erosion just continues eroding the rest of the coast. If the river went into the Atchafalaya channel where it wants to go, the sediment would end up rebuilding the eroded wetlands in that area, and the current delta would retreat back to a more defensible position. Geologists have mapped out a whole series of river channel migrations over the last several thousand years, where it tends to kind of sweep back and forth across most of Louisiana, keeping the general extent of the coast line even up until when the Old River control structure was built.

It wasn’t actually the digging of Shreve’s Cut that started the avulsion of the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya, but the clearing of the Great Raft from the Atchafalaya. This increased water flow into it, and eventually allowed it to start capturing the Mississippi, leading to the current clusterfuck.

"...a decision that some guy made 200 years ago before they had invented the concept of consequences." Well if that isn't just the root of all the world's problems right there 😂

Coming from a person with modest means, Hello Fresh is NOT as affordable as you and other creators say it is, with all due respect

"... the greatest country in the United States"... These guys not only do well on Jet Lag The Game, they also write pretty well. 😇

It would have been worth mentioning that the Atchafalaya bay / delta was actually the ancient delta of the Mississippi and the Mississippi only formed its current delta around 500 years ago.

I have worked both sides of the business. For the Corp and as a contractor, they have done some of the most impactful things you would never know. Few people know how great of a roll the have played in infrastructure projects around the world

As someone who's lived in Morgan City, nothing of value would be lost WHEN it's wiped off the map.

No, the cut was not the problem. Removing the log jams in Atchafalaya river aka Great Raft was the problem. The log jam blocked majority of Mississippi water from flowing down Atchafalaya for centuries. And in fact, if there was no Shreve's cut after removing the great raft, lower Mississippi would dry up much quicker.

Finally had my first gripe about his pronunciation with “ATCHAFALAYA”. 😂

Louisiana native here. It’s pronounced “uh-chaff-uh-lie-uh”.

Sam, great video, but I promise you if I hear the phrase "dumps it's Mississippi juice" ever again I will activate like CIA sleeper agent

Today's fact: When watermelons are grilled or baked, they lose their granular texture and can even be used as meat substitute, a 'watermelon steak'.

This is an example of WHY regulations came into existence. People who do not know or care to know the consequences of their decisions being able to cause untold future capital expenditure OR death & destruction. The reason you need an environmental study whenever you want to build a big project? to stop stuff like this from happening again, or at least giving people a heads-up on what they'll need to fork out in the future to deal with the downstream consequences. Those regulations SEEM overhanded because for every one ecological disaster in waiting they avert, most reports just come back essentially "all good". The number of times an entity's "simple project" turned out to have huge unintended consequences that lead to excessive struggle, costs, and death would turn your stomach.

It's not Shreve making the cut that caused the problem, it's the Mississippi bending in the first place, because it bent into the Red, sending the Mississippi's water down the Red/Atchafalaya. That's where the problem came from. If anything, Shreve lessened the problem.

For those that have never seen them, the levees along the lower Mississippi River are almost too large to describe. At least it amazed me, who grew up in Minneapolis, where the River is a rather modest stream flowing in an ordinary-looking channel. There are a couple floodwalls, etc., here and there, but nothing really massive like down in Louisiana.

Pretty disappointed you didn't mention the Great Raft. Which uh... Is the real reason the river started changing direction, or our removal of it.