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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.
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 ...
Two egrets on the limbs of a cypress in the Atchafalaya flood basin. The Atchafalaya River meanders south as a channel of the Mississippi, through extensive levees and floodways, past Morgan City, and empties into the Gulf in Atchafalaya Bay approximately 15 miles (24 km) south of Morgan City. Since the late 20th century, the river has been ...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers measured the amount of water flowing through the Mississippi River and compared it to the amount entering the Atchafalaya Basin by monitoring "latitude flow" at the latitude of the Red River Landing, located five miles (8.0 km) downstream of Old River. In this case, latitude flow is a combination of the flows of ...
Atchafalaya Basin. The wetlands of Louisiana are water-saturated coastal and swamp regions of southern Louisiana, often called "Bayou".. The Louisiana coastal zone stretches from the border of Texas to the Mississippi line [1] and comprises two wetland-dominated ecosystems, the Deltaic Plain of the Mississippi River (unit 1, 2, and 3) and the closely linked Chenier Plain (unit 4). [2]
The complex is located in the Morganza Flood way system [2] of the Atchafalaya Basin [3] about 30 miles (48 km) west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana and actually extends a little south of the I-10 Atchafalaya Basin Bridge at Whiskey Bay, Louisiana. The bridge crosses the Whiskey Bay Pilot Channel.
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 will also reduce floodwater stress on the Old River Control Structure upstream. This was the first opening of the spillway since the 1973 flood. [7] [34] [35] [36]
This flooding, plus any additional water from a Morganza Spillway release, together determine the total extent of flooding throughout the Atchafalaya Basin during a major Mississippi River flood. At risk in the Atchafalaya Basin are Morgan City (population 13,500), various smaller populated places, many farms, thousands of oil and gas wells ...