TOPOGRAPHICAL / CLIMATOLOGICAL CHALLENGES WIND AND WATER FLOW WORK AT CROSS PURPOSES: The hydraulics of the river is to move water south, the hydraulics of the Gulf of Mexico and the south wind is to move more water north. That’s kind of frustrating, but that’s exactly what’s happening to us every day. — Clifford Smith MOST OF TERREBONNE PARISH IS BELOW 5 FEET ABOVE SEA LEVEL: Terrebonne Parish, again, has about—I figure, about 1,300,000 acres of surface. Now when I saw surface area, you gotta remember I'm talking about open water, bays, saltwater marsh, freshwater marsh, swamps . b: Within the boundaries. S: And about 300,000 acres of land above that five-foot contour. So we have a million three hundred thousand acres of land. S: Five thousand [.0038%] above the 5-foot contour, okay? — Clifford Smith RAINFALL AND LOCAL HYDROLOGY: drainage was always important. We had a drainage, uh, a gravity drainage tax in this parish. As far as I know, it was put into place in the 1930's. And probably even before that to tell you the truth, but what I know is about the 1930's, there was a millage, a parish-wide millage for drainage—we'd call it gravity drainage improvements. Most of our drainage until my lifetime—my professional lifetime, was gravity drainage. We never had a drainage problem, an influx of water, we always had a gravity drainage problem, again, we get 60 inches of rainfall on average a year. One—1992 we got 100 inches of rain. Uh, we've gotten, some months, 20 inches of rain. In a month! okay? Uh, so drainage is always a big deal, course our drainage system also was drastically affected by the leveeing of Mississippi and the Atchafalaya River. — Clifford Smith NEGATIVE PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE VALUE OF THE COASTAL WETLANDS MARSHLANDS CONSIDERED WASTELANDS: And these marshlands were by and large just considered as wastelands to developers. The only thing they were interested in was land that you could farm — Allen Ensiminger MARSHLANDS CONSIDERED WASTELANDS: The Watkins family were early investors. And everybody laughed at them buying that old wasteland, "Never gonna amount to nothin', you can't farm that." [Angeline] bore out that hole right there in one day's production and their ancestor had made in the history of the family. — Allen Ensminger MARSHLANDS CONSIDERED USELESS: And then project a rectangular surveying system out into the marshes, out into the swamp, what they considered the un-valuable areas. — Clifford Smith 1 GEOGRAPHICALLY CHALLENGED AMERICANS DON'T REALIZE THERE IS A VULNERABLE LOUISIANA COAST AWAY FROM NEW ORLEANS: So I mean that's the—frankly, that is a problem for us, because nobody knows we're here, Man. Hell, half the—90% of people in America think the Mississippi River stops in New Orleans. When I tell them the Mississippi River goes 125 miles south of New Orleans they look at me like I'm nuts. Said, "Man, you think you seen some resources in the Mississippi Valley? Go to New Orleans, get in an airplane or a helicopter and fly to the mouth of the Mississippi River. You ain't seen nothin', Man!" — Clifford Smith LOUISIANA IS NOT EVEN AN AFTERTHOUGHT; AMERICA'S FAILURE TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE: This is a basin, okay? Love when the Corps talks about the basin. I said, "First off, when you're talking about the basin, the basin that I live in starts in Minnesota and it comes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Now I got a little basin where I live, but if you wanna talk about the BASIN, it's the big basin. And I'm part of the big basin! So don't do something in Minnesota and don't think about what the shit you're doing to me in Louisiana." They—lemme tell ya, they don't have a clue. Okay? I've been preaching that for 50 years and it's like, I mean, I just as soon been talkin' to the chair. [INAUDIBLE] gonna change everybody every three years, which you know is a ridiculous process. — Clifford Smith WETLANDS’ ROLE AS A BUFFER RANCHING AREAS SERVE AS A BUFFER BETWEEN THE COAST AND THE PLEISTOCENE PRAIRIES: But these marshes that we're driving through here now, were all productive cattle areas and still are. There's cattle grazing all over this prairie, up here, and this is kinda the interface between high land that extended south of DeQuincy down to Lake Charles/Sulfur area, and then tapered off into the marsh itself. — CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE: We don’t have the winter we used to have. We used to have some serious bad winters. And the winter was really moved our shrimp to the west. — Houston Foret CRAWFISHING CRAWFISHING DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION: [My daddy] he was a fisherman. He fished – he drug crawfish to feed his family at fifty cents a bucket. — Marshall Borel ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE ENGINEERING FOCUS ON CHANGING HYDROLOGY TO KEEP THE MISSISSIPPI FROM FLOODING: [During conversation with a leading New Orleans engineer, ca 1958.] And then I said well look I want to tell you about hurricane protection. He said 2 hurricane protection? We ain’t in that business. Man, get out of here! What the shit you talking about? This is before Betsy. We build levees along the Mississippi River. We don’t worry about no hurricanes. Okay? And I mean he insulted me all kinds of [ways]. — Clifford Smith PROBLEMS CAUSED BY CORPS OF ENGINEERS: The New Orleans district is the biggest financial district in the United States of America. Okay? They have more projects, navigation, flood control, levee systems, and etcetera, than any place. So first off, they ought to not have a guy in charge every three years. A guy ought to – somebody ought to stay. Second place, I’m not sure that the New Orleans district ought to be involved in the Louisiana Coastal Plan. Goddammit. The Louisiana Coastal Plan is as big as the New Orleans district. Okay, if you’re going to really go after it. So why would you have those people that are running navigation flood control blocks in the levees include the Louisiana Coastal Plan? Alright? So I suggest – again, I’m scared to go through anybody else but through the Corps of Engineers – I suggest through lack of knowledge of the bureaucracy that we create a Louisiana Coastal Command. And we put some general in charge, and we put some general in charge, and we put some general in charge that don’t move every three or four years. Now, you really want to make it broad, why don’t we create a United States Coastal Command? And why don’t we domical it in Louisiana and put a two-star general in charge of the damn thing. And put an appropriation process – like MR&T. That’s what happened in MRN&T after the great ’27 flood. I don’t get too far with that. (laughs) okay, let’s get out of here then. Let me get out of here. Okay, and by the way, I suggested that to of course Breaux and Tauzin over the years, and anybody else that would listen to me. By the way I’m pretty impressed with the guy from um, Baton Rouge. Dr. Cassidy. I suggested – if ya’ll ever get a chance to talk to that guy. He is a sharp dude. — Clifford Smith CHANGING REGIONAL HYDROLOGY IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY: western part of Terrebonne was affected by the ’27 flood – but a lot of people lived in western Terrebonne, particularly in 1927, so Terrebonne had minimum effect on the ’27 storm – the ’27 flood. Bayou Lafourche had practically nothing, um, the Mississippi and the Atchafalaya basin in particular were drastically affected. Even the levee system from Baton Rouge to New Orleans was not affected in ’27. Primarily because um, Lafourche and Terrebonne, as a matter of fact, because Bayou Lafourche was dammed in about 1904, before 1904, and I do have some slides that show that – most of the flooding in Terrebonne and Lafourche came from Bayou Lafourche. And in Terrebonne from the east – from Bayou Lafourche into Terrebonne. After the damming of the 1904 of Bayou Lafourche, generally Terrebonne and Lafourche had been protected from the Mississippi River. — Clifford Smith CHANGING REGIONAL HYDROLOGY IN 1928: After the great 1927 flood, the congress proposed a project to build along the lower Mississippi from Cairo, Illinois basically to 3 the Gulf of Mexico to ensure that they never have a 1927 flood in the Mississippi. Um, they assigned the overview and administration of that project also to the Mississippi River Commission. Again, that project is known as the MR&T project. It um, has been going on since 1928. It’s probably appropriated, or spent, about 13.5 billion dollars. Um, it has permitted many floods along the river. It has been designed to prevent the maximum flood, which this particular 2011 has probably been the closest thing to that in the last eighty years. — Clifford Smith CHANGED HYDROLOGY - NO FLOODING - THANKS TO LEVEE SYSTEM: Actually the last flood that I can find that shows any breaching of the levee between Baton Rouge and New Orleans was prior to 1900, and even in the ’27 flood those areas did not breach. And I’m sure that’s why there’s huge investments along the river. Those people that, frankly, finance those petrochemical plants realize that the levee system functions.