In Louisiana, residents along the Mississippi River await the inevitable
Thursday, May 12, 2011 - 19:30
in Earth & Climate
'We took a gamble when we bought here,' says one resident of Butte La Rose, La., which will be flooded if an upriver spillway is opened, as is expected, to ease pressure near New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Water is a way of life here. You settle beside a river, on soft, fertile soil barely more than a swamp, and it's understood that you're going to get flooded. But when that flooding is intentional, orchestrated by the government to save the big cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge from their own inundations, it has an especially cruel twist.