Bonnet Carre Spillway

Waging war on a flood of historic proportions that has already affected thousands in eight Midwestern and Southern states, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flooded a spillway Monday north of New Orleans in an effort to calm the rising Mississippi River.

The Corps' decision to open the Bonnet Carre spillway was part of its overall plan to reduce pressure on the levee system and reduce river levels to reduce the threat to low-lying New Orleans and other southern Louisiana communities. The spillway opened on Monday can accommodate about 1.87 million gallons of water per second, diverting water from the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico by way of Lake Pontchartrain.