By John Howell, Sr.

Publisher Emeritus

This train is bound for — a bus if you’re traveling by Amtrak between New Orleans and Marks. Water from the Bonnet Carre spillway that diverts Mississippi River floodwaters away from New Orleans and into Lake Pontchartrain rushes through the pilings that support the long trestle bridge along the south edge of the lake. Amtrak, out of an abundance of caution, removes southbound passengers from the train in Jackson, then buses them into New Orleans and the other destinations south of Jackson.

(Jackson instead of Hammond, the last southbound stop before New Orleans, because only major stops have baggage handling capabilities needed for riders with more luggage than they can carry on.)

Northbound passengers board buses in New Orleans and transfer to the rails in Jackson. Buses will likely continue until the spillway is closed and the trestles have been inspected. The train crews, meanwhile, carry the empty trains into New Orleans and back, running about 5 miles per hour over the rushing waters. Freight trains, likewise, are still using the route but at about the same speed.

How long the Bonnet Carre spillway will remain open, as floodwaters continue to rise in the many tributaries in the Mississippi’s watershed, is anybody’s guess right now. Mississippi and Louisiana’s seafood industry is taking a catastrophic hit from the fresh water flooding into the normally brackish Lake Pontchartrain and then into the Mississippi Sound. The normal balance of salt and fresh water in those estuaries and shallows provides excellent incubators for shrimp, oysters, crabs and other seafood staples has been severely impacted.

Another concession to the rising river is/will be the opening of the Morganza Spillway that diverts the Mississippi’s excess floodwaters into the Atchafalaya Basin, thence into the Gulf of Mexico near Morgan City. Engineers have set several dates for the spillway’s opening, then pushed them back because the Mississippi River hasn’t risen as rapidly initial projections.

The Morganza Spillway is a part of a worthy piece of engineering that includes the Old River Control Structure not far downstream from Natchez. It was built in the early 1960s when studies of the Mississippi River’s meander suggested that it increasingly wanted to cut a new route to the Gulf through the Atchafalaya Basin. If the big river is ever able to cut through its preferred route, Baton Rouge and New Orleans will be left in a brackish, unnavigable backwater and cut off from supplies of fresh water.

The route to the Gulf through the Atchafalaya would be shorter and steeper, engineers tell us, attractions that the Old Man might eventually find irresistible. The feat of engineering at the Old River Control Structure has thus far been able to keep the Mississippi in its present channel, but when the water rises like now, engineers worry whether the man-made structure will ultimately be able to control nature’s force.

Meanwhile, the train from Jackson to Marks and back has been pleasant travel. On the northbound trip I met a Batesville family returning from a Memorial Day trip to New Orleans. On their southbound trip they had experienced an unexpected delay when a tanker truck pulled into the locomotive’s path at an obscure rural crossing near Bentonia in Holmes County. The Amtrak engine was disabled from the impact rendering it unable to provide power for the air conditioning. Passengers attired for normal Amtrak travel soon found themselves sweltering. The location also offered no cell service except for a few passengers. A freight engine was summoned to pull the disabled train into Bentonia where passengers boarded buses for the remainder of their trip.

Nonetheless I am looking forward to an uninterrupted train trip from New Orleans to Marks and back once the swollen river has returned to its banks.

John Howell, Sr. was publisher and editor of The Panolian for many years. Write to him at johnhowl1948@yahoo.com