The LSU report, though, became best known for its proposed solution, which focused on counteracting levees. The authors suggested that some water and mud be diverted out of the Mississippi, back into the marshland. Let the river resume the work it had been doing for thousands of years, before it was restrained, in other words. It’s an idea that has captivated engineers and ecologists ever since.
To test the concept, scientists began to cut through the natural banks near the river’s mouth. (Because the land near the mouth was so irremediably swampy, levees were never built along the river’s last few dozen kilometers.) By the end of the 1980s, the
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