I keep getting in on this show on one of the “Sub-Discovery” channels it says the basically south of Baton Rouge the Mississippi has become a canal.
This is due to the fact years and years ago a guy blew up a log jam and it cause part of the Mississippi River to divert to a new river. This new river is a shorter course to the Gulf of Mexico.
So if the Army Corps of Engineers hadn’t stepped in and basically made the Mississippi a canal the river would have diverted and left New Orleans and other ports high and dry and miles from the ocean.
The short answer is yes. Ice Wolf provided the citations. The US Army Corps of Engineers - New Orleans Division has a really informative site about what they do presently to control the river and the Gulf in Louisiana.
I didn’t read the links but I assume they explain that the Corps built the “old river control sturcture” that prevents the Mississippi from changing it’s course.
As far North as Baton Rouge the Mississippi is considered a “ship channel” and accomadates up to 40 foot (may be off a few feet) drafts. Below New Orleans you have the “passes” which are sorta like islands between the river and the Gulf.
No responsibility for any eerrors in this post but I believe it to be fairly accurate. The story of the Corps and the Mississippi River and the federal government is fascinating.
The topic is explained in fascinating depth in a chapter of John McPhee’s The Control of Nature. I’d recommend anything he writes. As he explains it: The Mississippi historically meanders, with the outlet having diverted periodically over pretty much all of what’s now Lousiana. As silt piles up, other ground becomes lower and the river moves. It has “wanted” to relocate the mainstream to the Atchafalaya for quite some time now, but that has been prevented by the Army Corps of Engineers structure at the Old River. That has kept the river dumping silt further and further offshore uselessly, no longer replenishing the rest of the Delta, and letting the sea encroach further inland along the bayou country as the ground sinks. But, it has kept New Orleans and Baton Rouge open to ship traffic and has protected various economic interests.
It’s a little scary to be standing in Jackson Square in New Orleans, looking toward the river and seeing a levee where there used to be docks, but having to look up to see the ships go by.
A sort of “climbing” canal. To keep the Mississippi in its course, you have to deal with the billions of tons of sediment it brings - some combination of dredging out the river bed and building up the levees. It’s a lot of work, and costs a lot of money.
From a geological perspective, the Mississippi should already have been captured by the Atchafalaya, and soon will be. In human terms, you can argue at length about just when “soon” will be.
I second Elvis’s recommendations of book and author - first rate.
For the fiction minded, one of Clive Cussler’s potboilers has as its central plot the arch-villain building a giant port well above the waterline, and then plotting to divert the course of the Mississippi so that his port is the only useable one. Can’t recall the title right now–all of Cussler’s books tend to blur together after a while.