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Financial Statement.

SURVEYS, GAUGES, AND OBSERVATIONS, THIRD DISTRICT.

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Amount that can be profitably expended during the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1894

$5,397.09 4,871. 71

525.38

1,000.00 474.62

525.38

000, 000.00

810.00 891.33 1,400. 20

1,298.00

385.48 86.70

4,871. 71

12,000.00

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Amount that can be profitably expended during fiscal year ending June 30, 1894

For construction....

For high water protection

89,743.99 9, 825.00 1, 136. 15 5,000.00 2,000.00

107, 705. 14 104, 615. 48

3,089.66

7,000.00 3,910, 34

3,089.66

94, 562.78 4,320. 76 5,731.94

104, 615. 48

500,000.00 10,000.00

Financial Statement.

LEVEES, TENSAS BASIN, THIRD DISTRICT, IN ARKANSAS.

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Less amount covered by existing contracts and liabilities.......

No available balance.

Expenditures apportioned:

Levee construction and repairs
Engineering and office expenses
High-water protection.

Amount that can be profitably expended during fiscal year ending June 30, 1894

For construction

For high water...

22, 719. 40

18,000.00 4, 719.40 22,719.40

130, 559.30 8, 687.67

6, 981.95

146, 228.92

750,000.00 25,000.00

Financial Statement.

LEVEES TENSAS BASIN, THIRD DISTRICT, IN LOUISIANA.

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Amount that can be profitably expended during fiscal year ending June

30, 1894

Construction

High water.

1, 181.00

93, 474. 15 87, 497.00

5,977. 15

5,977. 15

5,977. 15

82, 789.47 4, 015. 71 691.82

87, 497.00

500,000.00 10,000.00

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Approximate value of plant belonging to the United States and used upon the third district, Mississippi River, May, 1892.

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List of civilian engineers employed on work of river and harbor improvement, in charge of Capt. C. McD. Townsend, Corps of Engineers, from June 30, 1891, to May 31, 1892, inclusive, under the river and harbor acts approved August 11, 1888, September 19, 1890, and March 3, 1891.

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APPENDIX 7.

REPORT OF LIEUTENANT JOHN MILLIS, CORPS OF ENGINEERS, ON OPERATIONS IN FOURTH DISTRICT.

UNITED STATES ENGINEER OFFICE,

New Orleans, La., June 2, 1892.

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report upon the works in charge of this office under the Mississippi River Commission for the period from July 1, 1891, up to May 31, 1892, in accordance with recent instructions from the Commission: The office has charge under the Commission of the Fourth district, which extends from Warrenton, Miss., 7.4 miles below Vicksburg, to the Head of the Passes. The district comprises 484 miles of the river and includes the works of improvement at Natchez, Miss., and Vidalia, La., at the junction of the Mississippi, Red, and Atchafalaya rivers, near Turnbull Island, Louisiana, and at New Orleans Harbor. It also comprises the work of construction, repair, and maintenance of a portion of the levee system of the district; the maintenance of certain gauges, and certain surveys, observations, and other special work.

IMPROVEMENT OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER AT NATCHEZ, MISSISSIPPI, AND VIDALIA, LOUISIANA.

At its meeting of November 26, 1890, the Commission directed that a resurvey of those portions of the river which included the proposed works of improvement be made, and the sum of $1,500, was allotted for the purpose.

This survey was made as directed, and the report and map submitted with the last annual report from this office.

There have been no additional funds allotted and no further work was done during the past year.

The detrimental action of the river which the proposed works are intended to arrest still continues and probably at an increasing rate.

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Amount that can be profitably expended during fiscal year ending June 30, 1894....

$250,000

WORKS OF IMPROVEMENT AT THE JUNCTION OF THE MISSISSIPPI, RED, AND ATCHAFALAYA RIVERS, AT TURNBULL ISLAND, LOUISIANA.

The condition of the river channels in this vicinity is somewhat peculiar and confusing. Turnbull Island is approximately rectangular in shape and is about 6 miles long east and west, with an average breadth north and south of 2 miles. It is situated on the west side of the Mississippi River, about 200 miles above New Orleans, and its eastern extremity is now about a mile from the west bank of the river.

The island was formerly a peninsula connected by a narrow neck to what is now the east bank, and the main river passed around its western end. The Red River then emptied into the Mississippi opposite the northwest point of the peninsula, and the Atchafalaya was an outlet bayou or diffluent whose head was opposite the southwest point of the peninsula, about 2 miles below the mouth of the Red. Such was the condition of affairs at least as far back as 1578, the date of the earliest recorded observation by civilized man, and no material change took place until 1831, when the main river cut through the narrow neck, forming what is now called Turnbull Island.

The cut off is said to have been made or assisted by a Captain Shreve, and in some reports on this subject mention is made of difficulties of navigation which had previously been experienced owing to the shoal water found at the mouth of Red River during the low-water season, which the cut-off was designed to remedy.

It would seem entirely probable that prior to the cut-off a bar might have been

formed at the mouth of Red River, which at low water would have impeded navigation, the same as now occurs at the mouth of the White, Arkansas, Yazoo, and other tributaries, and it is a matter of record that even since the cut-off and until a comparatively recent date the head of the Atchafalaya went nearly dry at low water, as does the outlet Bayou Lafourche at the present time.

Since the requirements of navigation prior to 1831 were quite different from those that exist at this date, comparisons of low-water difficulties, in the absence of accurate and reliable surveys, as they existed before and after the cut-off, are not very reliable.

A greater portion of the old river bed which was abandoned by the main river when the cut-off was made has become filled up with sediment, which has formed extensive bars that are dry except at high water and are thickly grown up with young trees. There is, however, a continuous channel around the island, much narrower than the original river, which still remains clear and navigable at high water, though the bottom of the portion north of the island is dry at low water and navigation through that portion south of the island is maintained during extreme low stages with difficulty. There are, besides these channels, various sloughs, lakes, and ponds in the old river bed that retain more or less water throughout the low-water

season.

Another important change that has taken place since the cut-off is the general enlargement of the Atchafalaya in depth and width and its tendency to receive at certain stages the entire discharge of the Red River as well as a portion of that of the Mississippi. In fact the Red and Atchafalaya, with that portion of the old Mississippi River at the western end of the island between what was formerly the mouth of the Red and the head of the Atchafalaya as a connecting link, may now be regarded as forming really one river, which has a general direction parallel to that of the Mississippi, and which approaches the latter at Turnbull Island to within a distance of about 6 miles.

It must be noted, however, in considering the Red and Atchafalaya as one river, that a marked change in the characteristics of this river takes place at Turnbulí Island. For a long distance above this point the slope is very gentle and the current sluggish and at certain periods nearly slackwater, or even a temporary reversed current may exist. The banks are low, heavily wooded, unleveed, always overflowed in high water, and are uninhabited.

Below Turnbull Island the section of the river, though constantly enlarging, is still much smaller than that immediately above, and the banks are high and cultivated. The west bank is leveed down to West Melville, 30 miles below Turnbull Island, while on the opposite bank the levee system now extends down about 17 miles below the island. The slope is much greater than that above, the current is swift, and the presence of numerous rafts or jams of trees and logs produces eddies and boils which render navigation unsafe without an experienced pilot. The banks are caving rapidly in many places.

About 40 miles below Turnbull Island the Atchafalaya begins to spread out into an intricate network of interconnecting bayous and lakes, mostly shoal, which finally reunite in the vicinity of Morgan City. The Bayou Teche, which is the principal distinct bayon to the westward of the Atchafalaya system, also comes in near Morgan City, forming a broad, deep bayou. This bayou continues, under the name Atchafalaya River, and after a course of about 35 miles, mainly through low sea marsh, it finally expands into Atchafalaya Bay, a shallow arm of the Gulf of Mexico. The entire Red and Atchafalaya rivers system comprises in high water a total length of about 4,300 miles of navigable river, and in low water about 345 miles for a 3-foot draft and 132 miles for a 5-foot draft.

There is no available deep-water port on the Lower Atchafalaya, and the outlet for this entire system is now through the old Mississippi River channel south of Turnbull Island, which here forms a connecting link with the Mississippi, and thence by the Mississippi to the seaport of New Orleans. At high and medium stages of the river the channel north of Turnbull Island is also available, but it is less direct than the lower channel and is now seldom used.

The difficulties now experienced result from a tendency of the Old River to become filled up, owing partly to the absence of a definite current of sufficient strength to prevent the deposit of sediment and partly to the sliding down of the soft and recently formed banks. At low water the navigable connection between the Red and Atchafalaya system and the Mississippi is almost invariably seriously impaired and has been entirely interrupted in several instances.

Regarding the Red and Atchafalaya as one river, the direction and force of the current in the branches of Old River will evidently depend upon the relative height of the water in the Red and Atchafalaya system and in the Mississippi, and according as the one or the other of these two rivers happens to be the higher, or as they are both at the same level, the current through Old River is toward the east, toward the west, or is nil. In the first case there is a greater or less discharge from the Red and

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