Community effort helps farmers

• By AMY WOLD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 27, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:15 a.m.

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MORGANZA — Three farmers, backed by a communitywide effort, are in the final stages of building a levee of sandbags near the Morganza Spillway to help protect millions of dollars worth of crops.

It’s a race against a rising river and forecasts of rain in Pointe Coupee Parish, and they haven’t done it alone.

“We’ve had so many friends and neighbors pitch in to help,” said Marty Graham, one of the three farmers who use the property to plant wheat, soybeans and other crops.

On Wednesday, about 50 people, including the Louisiana National Guard, the Atchafalaya River Basin Levee District, farmhands and prisoners from the Avoyelles Correctional Center, were finishing the first line of sandbags.

Local businesses and other farmers have pitched in by donating the large seed bags being filled with dirt and providing meals for the workers.

“We’ve gotten help from really all over the parish,” Graham said.

Since March 20, these farmers have been working to place 4-foot square bags of dirt along a small levee that separates their farmland east of the spillway structure from the Mississippi River, Graham said. This 2.2-mile stretch of levee is kept at a shorter elevation to allow water to flow toward the spillway control structure built in the 1950s to provide river flooding relief to downstream areas such as  Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

If water gets into the approximately 8,000 acres — about 5,000 of which can be used for farming — in front of the spillway gates, it could be August or September before the land is drained completely. That would mean a loss of not only the 1,200 acres of wheat he has ready for harvest, but also the 3,500 acres of soybeans he and the other farmers — Ricky Rivet and John Goode — plan to plant soon, Graham said.

“Basically we’d be out of production for the next year,” Graham said.

Snow melt and heavy rains in the northern part of the Mississippi River basin have the river reaching flood stage in many areas of the valley. Flood stage is the level of water that would normally cause a river to overflow its banks if not for the levees.

Near Morganza, the crest, or highest level, of the flood is expected be about a foot over the small levee protecting the fields. This crest is supposed to come by April 7, the National Weather Service said.

“Once that water gets in here, there’s no drainage to get it out,” Rivet said.

The farmers, and others, would like to see the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers raise that small levee to a height that could offer more protection.