i love when my home state of Louisiana only ever gets media coverage for how much of an ecological nightmare it is

Shreve was involved with many river 'engineering' projects with unintended consequences. Probably the biggest was him clearing out a massive ancient log dam on the Atchafalaya River known as the Great Raft. With the dam cleared, the river started to flow again and cut much deeper which probably was a major contributing factor to the issues described in this video.

So if you zoom out to time scales of 5,000 years or so, the Mississippi river is / always was going to find a way to move into the Atchafalaya basin anyhow. Regardless of what Shreve may have done at some point. The Old River control structure alone will not be able to keep it in channel forever. Some other leak somewhere else is going to inevitably spurt out, because the Atchafalaya basin is a shorter and steeper path to the Gulf right now. If Uncle Sam wants to keep the river in channel long term, it's gonna have to keep plugging holes. This is also why Louisiana has a really bad "coastal erosion" problem. By keeping the river in channel, the river has built the current Mississippi delta way out into the Gulf of Mexico, and it's dumping all that sediment into deep water where it's not doing anything. Meanwhile, erosion just continues eroding the rest of the coast. If the river went into the Atchafalaya channel where it wants to go, the sediment would end up rebuilding the eroded wetlands in that area, and the current delta would retreat back to a more defensible position. Geologists have mapped out a whole series of river channel migrations over the last several thousand years, where it tends to kind of sweep back and forth across most of Louisiana, keeping the general extent of the coast line even up until when the Old River control structure was built.

I am 8 seconds into this video and “the Mississippi River dumps it’s Mississippi juice into the ocean right here” is a phrase I was NOT ready to hear this morning

It wasn’t actually the digging of Shreve’s Cut that started the avulsion of the Mississippi into the Atchafalaya, but the clearing of the Great Raft from the Atchafalaya. This increased water flow into it, and eventually allowed it to start capturing the Mississippi, leading to the current clusterfuck.

Coming from a person with modest means, Hello Fresh is NOT as affordable as you and other creators say it is, with all due respect

It would have been worth mentioning that the Atchafalaya bay / delta was actually the ancient delta of the Mississippi and the Mississippi only formed its current delta around 500 years ago.

"... the greatest country in the United States"... These guys not only do well on Jet Lag The Game, they also write pretty well. 😇

I have worked both sides of the business. For the Corp and as a contractor, they have done some of the most impactful things you would never know. Few people know how great of a roll the have played in infrastructure projects around the world

"...a decision that some guy made 200 years ago before they had invented the concept of consequences." Well if that isn't just the root of all the world's problems right there 😂

As someone who's lived in Morgan City, nothing of value would be lost WHEN it's wiped off the map.

Today's fact: When watermelons are grilled or baked, they lose their granular texture and can even be used as meat substitute, a 'watermelon steak'.

No, the cut was not the problem. Removing the log jams in Atchafalaya river aka Great Raft was the problem. The log jam blocked majority of Mississippi water from flowing down Atchafalaya for centuries. And in fact, if there was no Shreve's cut after removing the great raft, lower Mississippi would dry up much quicker.

Finally had my first gripe about his pronunciation with “ATCHAFALAYA”. 😂

This is an example of WHY regulations came into existence. People who do not know or care to know the consequences of their decisions being able to cause untold future capital expenditure OR death & destruction. The reason you need an environmental study whenever you want to build a big project? to stop stuff like this from happening again, or at least giving people a heads-up on what they'll need to fork out in the future to deal with the downstream consequences. Those regulations SEEM overhanded because for every one ecological disaster in waiting they avert, most reports just come back essentially "all good". The number of times an entity's "simple project" turned out to have huge unintended consequences that lead to excessive struggle, costs, and death would turn your stomach.

Sam, great video, but I promise you if I hear the phrase "dumps it's Mississippi juice" ever again I will activate like CIA sleeper agent

Louisiana native here. It’s pronounced “uh-chaff-uh-lie-uh”.

For those that have never seen them, the levees along the lower Mississippi River are almost too large to describe. At least it amazed me, who grew up in Minneapolis, where the River is a rather modest stream flowing in an ordinary-looking channel. There are a couple floodwalls, etc., here and there, but nothing really massive like down in Louisiana.

It's not Shreve making the cut that caused the problem, it's the Mississippi bending in the first place, because it bent into the Red, sending the Mississippi's water down the Red/Atchafalaya. That's where the problem came from. If anything, Shreve lessened the problem.

A lot of YT creators ask people to like & comment (as that helps the algorithm). That probably gets a few extra comments. But the clever ones just pronounce a place name differently (from the locals) and sit back for the hundreds of comments that gets. Sam is a genius IMHO.

what if I am pro drinking water and anti Morgan City and would therefore have no problem if it got a little wet?

Pretty disappointed you didn't mention the Great Raft. Which uh... Is the real reason the river started changing direction, or our removal of it.

Fun fact: Tom Scott also made a video about this...not that it matters, just that I remembered the video's existance.

From the makers of "How Many Japanese Words will Sam Mispronounce?", comes the long-awaited sequel "How Many Louisianian Words will Sam Mispronounce?"

Your Louisiana pronunciations are quite shocking, but as a Cajun I appreciate you trying

What I’ve been hearing is that the bayou is flooding and needs the Mississippi to flow naturally through to deposit sediments, this is to maintain the environmental balance of the delta.

On 30 November 1982, PBS aired a NOVA episode, Goodbye Louisiana, about this subject, and also about loss of coastline in the state.

I've been to the old river structure. It's amazing what we do to keep the river from going where it wants.

TLDR: They made 3 floodgates

Louisianian here: Atchafalaya is pronounced: uh-CHAF-fu-LY-uh, where the upper case means it's stressed. You pronounced the sounds right but your stressed it very oddly (I think you stressed the first syllable or something). It's a hard word, but I thought I'd let you know.

All river deltas are flood zones where sediment slowly builds new land and the river changes course over hundreds of years. However, it is very annoying for people to live on land that is constantly flooding, so people build levees to prevent flooding. The levees also prevent river sediment from spreading out over the delta, so the river silts up as the soil in the surrounding land naturally sinks as it becomes compressed. Eventually we get to what we have now, which is cities built on land now below sea level surrounded by levees that need constant maintenance and a silted river so much higher than surrounding land that any break in the levees will cause massive flooding.

living in south louisiana i know way too much about this. The controlling of the mississippi is causing massive coastal erosion and is one of the reasons hurricanes hit us so bad.

What if you wanted to change your course, but humanity said: “Old River Control Structure”

"But hey you know what else has catastrophic consequences, not eating right" Me: *finishing eating my smore poptart*

0:08 The first time an HAI video includes stock footage of someone shaking their head or wagging their finger or something it always cracks me up

Sam says "but hey...." near the end & we all pause the video before the ad 👀. Love you Sam

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"Dumps it's Mississippi juice" right off the bat. Go on...😉

can you give the studies cited at 3:05 please?

I hate to be "that guy" but his name is pronounced "shrEEv." Shreveport is named after him. Love your videos, keep up the great work.

Rivers naturally move their courses. The atchafalaya River is 150 miles or so shorter than the Mississippi's course to the gulf, making it faster. Keeping the current river course has devastating effects on the Louisiana coastline.

504 ya heard me! during the last few major hurricanes they seemed pretty worried around here about the river control structure getting washed away. and I think it was last year or the year before during the high river season it was getting almost too high around that area and they were worried about it then too. theres a youtube channel by a local teacher named loren klien and he made some cool videos about it back then.

The way he says Atchafalaya is just adorable. Bless it.

I always love it when people cover this topic as everyone mispronounces Atchafalaya in various interesting ways. The pronunciation I've heard being a Baton Rouge native is Uh-chaff-uh-lye-uh.

grew up in louisiana, and i've been to the old river control structure. it's pretty cool

But how many bears are in the Mississippi River right now? (On average)

Baton Rouge does not get it's drinking water from the Mississippi River. Our drinking water comes from deep aquafers.

2 seconds in and we're already talking about Mississippi juice. Brilliant.

glad to know I'm not the only one to mistakenly cause an ecological catastrophe

The t is basically silent in "Atchafalaya." Say the first syllable like "Uhh" -- "Uhh chaf a lya"

The Mississippi has changed course in its delta about every 1000-1500 years which has essentially created most of southeast Louisiana .The delta switch is overdue and this course change likely would still have happened but Shreve cut and the clearing of the great raft log jam simply sped up this process.

Your pronunciation of Atchafalaya is super close! Not bad.

Mississippi juice?? Oh ma gwad

In a college geology course the professor described how "straightening" the river dramatically increases the amount of top soil washed into the Gulf of Mexico. The delta where the Mississippi flows into the gulf continues to increase in size. In the original "oxbow" river rich soil was desposited on the riverbanks, not ending up as part of the delta at the mouth of the river. Want to be surprised ? Do a little research and see how much soil is deposited on the delta.

While it is true that New Orleans, the largest city in Louisiana, would lose its source of drinking water, Baton Rouge would generally not. The Southern Hills Aquifer supplies Baton Rouge with some of the best water in the nation. While this would still be bad, a lot of people in Baton Rouge would be saved from the drinking water shortage.

Tbh at 1:23, pre Shreve cut, it already looks like it flows into the Atchafalaya

I learned this from a Clive Cussler book! Blew my mind.

what website do your channel use to get those gifs?

Nice vid, but you forgot to mention another unintended consequence from the new dam complex: the last stretch of the Mississippi now loses almost its entire sediment load, so now the Louisiana coastline is rapidly eroding away

Huh an HAI video topic that I already knew about... Weird day

You also have the dredging of the Mississippi to allow easier navigation that ends up meaning sediment doesn't reach the delta. If you don't replenish the sediment in the delta, the ocean's going to eventually erode it. N'Orleans is kind of doomed no matter what.

You can read more about this in John McPhee's amazing book, Control of Nature! 300 riveting pages of action packed stories!

Destruction of New Orleans and Baton Rouge would make Shreveport the largest city in Louisana. Maybe it was an intended consequence after all.

Great video as always, one note though, I think atchafalaya is pronounced with an silent t, that's how my family from Louisiana says it anyway.

Laughed my ass off when you opened with “The Mississippi River dumps it’s Mississippi juice”. 😂

as someone who spent 3 years living in morgan city, i am actually pro-morgan city being destroyed in a gigantic flood

the stock footage is so silly, it's golden

No link to factor in description?

There is a movie/documentary I watched about this that was made by a man that had spent his entire life living in the Atchafalaya Basin Louisiana coast. He had photos that were made when he was a kid that showed 20 years or so previously where there were trees and marsh and now it was nothing but water for 20 miles from the current Louisiana coast. Why is this happening? Very simple. The Mississippi levee system on this current channel is not allowing the silt that would normally travel to the Louisiana coast to get there to maintain the marsh. He told how much coast they were loosing every year and it was a pretty substantial amount; a few miles a year the best I can remember. The decline started as soon as the levee system was built in the early 1900’s. I believe he even brought up the fact that the Mississippi would naturally move its route to the Atchafalaya basin if it were left alone and this would stop. He also talked about how this effects the New Orleans metro area; for every mile of marsh they loose; they loose a certain amount of protection from the gulf over taking the town. The next Katrina level hurricane that hits New Orleans will wipe it out permanently according to what he was saying.

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He came hot out the gates with "Mississippi Juice" and immediately lost it 😂😂

I’ve watched a much longer and much more detailed documentary about this. Although this video made me forget information about the Mississippi, I still like it better.

There are lots of tributaries also.

Yknow, I think it's high time we get another brick video. Just because the other one is titled "The Brick Video" doesn't mean it's the *only* one.

I love it when we get more information about the Mississippi River and New Orleans in general.

Didn't know that about drinking water. Maybe you should do a full video on it since it's so important

"Henry Shrev" As a Shreveport resident, I am simply dumbfounded.

doesnt removing such a bend also speed up the river downstream, which over time would alter its entire path (i.e bends on a faster river would get washed out until they are straighter)?

never did i ever think i would be introduced to the term "mississippi juice"

I feel like this one stops after the intro and then never talks about what happens next. We have a big weird river control structure, please continue...

50 years ago my geography prof said that if the Corps stopped dredging that the delta would reestablish itself and the Mississippi Sound would clear up.

That's it!??? I was wanting to hear more about it.

He didn't mention the fact that this hasn't fully reversed the change in waterflow, just that it's helped the large cities grow bigger. The water use in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, & those in-between are still weakening the river's output to the Gulf of Mexico. Communities like Pilottown & La Balize on the very mouth of the delta died due to the lack of water & erosion in those channels, so that now Venice is the closest permanently populated place to the mouth. Alternatively, the Acthafalaya River being strengthened has allowed for deposits to develop at it's mouth, adding more land to the Louisiana coast as the other part shrinks.

Imagine thinking the water in the mississippi is safe for human consumption

This video ends when it feels like it is just starting. I was waiting for something like: "but here's the problem with that solution". But no. It just ended. I'm unsatisfied.

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You didn’t even mention the Great Raft. That’s the genesis of the whole problem!

Through the millennium, way before Europeans arrived, the Mississippi occasionally changed routes pretty dramatically into where the Atchafalaya is then back to where it is now. They’ve been keeping it from doing its natural rerouting for decades.

Just FYI, Shreve in Cpt. Henry Miller Shreve is pronounce Shr-ee-vee, like Sleeve

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Hey! From Shreveport. You said Shive as in chive but it is shreve as in Steve

Shreve's Cut is only one relatively small part of his actions on the Lower Mississippi River. If Shreve had been content to simply cut off Turnbull's Bend, it would not have been too much trouble later. The current problems were caused when Shreve cleared out the massive logjams that clogged up the lower Red River and the Atchafalaya, and by freeing water flow in the Atchafalaya, Shreve caused the Mississippi to try to change course. And there is historical precedent for the Mississippi River changing course. In the early decades of Illinois statehood, the French colonial city of Kaskaskia was one of its most prominent settlements, and indeed Kaskaskia also served as Illinois's first state capital until the more inland Vandalism was developed. The course change of the Mississippi River at Kaskaskia involved several major floods devastating the city in the years leading up to the Big Flood that completely destroyed Kaskaskia and cut its environs off from the rest of Illinois. Today, Kaskaskia is one of the smallest incorporated places in the United States with a population of just fourteen, accessible overland only through Missouri.

The majority of the US petrochemical industry is located on the Mississippi between Baton Rouge and New Orleans because it requires massive quantities of fresh water. All of this industry would have to relocate to the Atchafalaya. The infrastructure for a substantial quantity of the US Gulf Coast oil industry is located in Morgan City and would have to relocate to higher ground. The 10's billions of $ this would justifies billions used to keep the river nailed in place. but the high sediment load means the delta keeps growing into the gulf. Since the minimum elevation profile that will allow water to flow is 1 foot per mile for every mile longer the river gets it gets a foot higher.

"...in and out of the greatest country in the United States." Love the subtle humor on this channel 😊

*Mississippi juice* caught me offguard at the start of the video... 🤣🤣🤣

This video made 0 sense so I had to research it - and yea, *the video is wrong* . The channel did not divert the flow of the Mississippi to the side river, that doesn’t make sense, in fact a more direct channel through the bend should lead to less water flowing westward. Apparently, the river flowed fine until a log jam was removed which then caused more water to flow westward. Ironically, Shreve did actually lead this project, so he did cause the damage, but not fully because of the channel.

Bro literally created sarcasm

They shortcutted an oxbow lake and regretted it

Great video.

Nothing happens until something moves. That's why new Orleans rebounded after the hurricane.