LA Plan to Reclaim Land Would Divert the Mississippi

Over two centuries, engineers have restrained the Mississippi River's natural urge to wriggle disastrously out of its banks by building hundreds of miles of levees that work today like a riverine straitjacket.

But it is time, Louisiana officials propose, to let the river loose.

To save the state from washing into the ocean at the astonishing rate of 24 square miles per year, Louisiana officials are developing an epic $50 billion plan that would rebuild the land by rerouting one of the world's biggest rivers. The proposal envisions enormous projects to provide flood protection and reclaim land-building sediment from the river, which now flows uselessly out into the Gulf of Mexico.

The cost of the project, which was initiated by the legislature after hurricanes Katrina and Rita revealed the dangers of the sinking coast, dwarfs those of other megaprojects such as the $14 billion "Big Dig" in Boston and the $8 billion Everglades restoration.

"This will be one of the great engineering challenges of the 21st century -- on the order of the Channel Tunnel or the Three Gorges Dam," said Denise J. Reed, a scientist at the University of New Orleans who has focused on the river. "What is obvious to everyone is that something has to be done."

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