artificial crevasse – mammoth // building nothing out of something

artificial crevasse


[Before the 1928 Flood Control Act, the Mississippi River flood control plan consisted of two basic elements: levees and outlets.  Earthern levees would hold the water back.  When necessary, outlets would be utilized to divert flood waters.  In an emergency, more levees could be created with sandbags; more outlets could be created by blowing levees up.  Here, a levee is dynamited to create an artificial crevasse -- a crack or breach in a levee or dike -- at Caernarvon, Louisiana, reducing pressure on levees in New Orleans.]

This entry was written by rholmes, posted on May 28, 2011 at 5:00 pm, filed under asides, floods, infrastructure and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

One Response to “artificial crevasse”

  1. mound crevasse – mammoth // building nothing out of something says:
    June 1, 2011 at 6:01 pm

    [...] point.  That point is called a crevasse.  (As mentioned previously, crevasses can also be created intentionally to produce emergency [...]