The Control of Nature
by McPhee, John.
pub by - FarrR Straus and Giroux, NY, USA 1989 - isbn 0-7838-8774-4 (Large Type version) - - LCCN = 99-42399 (Large Type version) - - Contents p. 6 - - Atchafalaya p. 9 - - Cooling the Lava p.125 - Los Angles Against the Mountains p. 233 - - 345 pages total.
Like any large river which enters the sea, the Mississippi has had different mouths over that last several thousand years. As silt settles at the mouth partucularly during floods the land there becomes marginally higher than the area surrounding on either side. The river breaks through its natural bank and establishes a new, and lower, route to the sea. The Mississippi, the Amazon and Nile are good examples. Often with human settlements along the river these changes in channel are very inconvenient.
Some miles upstream of Baton Rouge, Louisanna the Mississippi and the neighboring Atchafalaya are quite near one another. the Atchafalaye has a better, lower, route to the Gulf of Mexico than the current route of the Mississippi which goes past Baton Rouge and New Orleans. A loop of the Mississippi is carving out the connnection to the Atchafalaya. Note that a tributary to the Atchafalaya is the Red River which divides NE Texas from Oklahoma, providing the Atchafalaya a fair amount of water outside what it gets from the Mississippi. As the erosion in that loop cutting a larger and larger connection continued over 10s of years it became plain to see that soon enough there would be no water for the lower Mississippi. The Port of New Orleans would dry up. The industrial plants along the heavily built-up Baton Rouge to New Orleans corridor. This part of the river going dry would cost billions of dollars.
Over 100 years flooding along the whole Mississippi has had partial control by way of levees. As the levees grew larger they squeezed the river and unprotected places were more disasterously flooded. The existing levees needed to be made taller to contain the higher floods caused by the levees not allowing the water to disperse on land adjoining the river.
The political power of the governament was again brought to bear and the US Army Corps of Engineers was directed to deal with the problem to control the Mississippi/Atchafalaya connection and force the Mississippi to continue in its normal banks and to drain excess water off down the Atchafalaya to minimize flooding to Baton Rouge, New Orleans and the industrial area between. The OLD RIVER CONTROL STRUCTURE was built to do just that, along with the Morganza Spillway. The Old River Control Structure was almost destroyed in the great flood of 1973. It survived damaged and continues to do its job with backup from other structures.

Cooling the Lava - Iceland is a very geologically active place. New islands sometimes arive, and sometimes they grow. The island SW of the main island of Iceland called Vestmannaeyjar began erupting and threatned the whole island with oozing lava. Vestmannaeyjar island has a very good harbor which supports the Icelandic fishing fleet. Island proper has its fijords and harbors on the North side. the Vestmannaeyjar harbor is practically the only good harbor on the South side, and thereby is very important.

Los Angeles, California is located between the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriel mountains. These mountains are eroding at a rapid pace, but they are rising as fast or faster than they erode. The city of Los Angeles has an eastern part which has buildings, almost all houses of the more wealthy, built up the side of the mountains. Those mountains shed mud, gravel and relly big rocks in huge slides during major rains. This causes havoc, destroying houses and all down slope. Solutions are costly and not totally effective. People however keep building as it is cooler at altitude ane the views are magnificent. McPhee gets input form a wide variety of experts and people who have lived there for long periods of time.

All together this is an interesting book, well worth reading.
~ 2019-07-19 ~

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