Redirect the Mississippi?

I don't know how many of you caught it, but last night on Anderson Cooper's CNN show, Douglas Brinkley said that the administration is considering redirecting the Mississippi River into the marshes to help clean out the oil and restore wetlands that are being lost to coastal erosion.

Well, now the Mississippi River has to be redirected. It's going to have to be flooded and sediment pumped into these marshlands to save it. I think the Obama administration...

He got interrupted and I sat up in my chair, wondering if I had heard correctly.

This is a turning point. There is an appetite on Capitol Hill for Gulf recovery act. The Mississippi River is going to have to be redirected into the marshlands. And BP and Transocean and other, you know, operations, Cameron, other companies are going to have to pay up to $10 billion and $15 billion for breaking national acts.

Really!

I hope they know what they're doing. The Mississippi River has been trying to go down the Atchafalaya for several decades now. If it weren't for the Old River control structure, the Mississippi would have made a right turn near Three Rivers and headed for Morgan City. The river at New Orleans would be brine, and a whole 'nuther story would be written.