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placed over 600,000 people. The Mississippi River and Tributaries Project was designed to
control flooding and improve navigation in several ways, and one of these was to straight-
en the channel by eliminating meanders. Artificially creating a meander cut-off shortens
the course of the river, so increasing its gradient and speed of flow. In this way, the wa-
ter erodes and deepens the channel, thereby increasing its flood capacity. The huge scale
of this operation was reflected in a dramatic shortening of the Mississippi. In 1929, a boat
sailing between Memphis, Tennessee, and Red River Landing in Louisiana travelled 885
kilometres, but by 1942 the same journey had been shortened by 274 kilometres - some
30% - thanks to the series of cut-offs.
15. Maintaining the Mississippi's role as an important transport route has been the
motivation for many human impacts on the river. This barge is near Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, where the channel is about 700 metres wide
Further protection from floods is provided by nearly 3,500 kilometres of levées and flood-
walls along the Mississippi River itself and along some of its major tributaries, but despite
these huge efforts the Mississippi is still prone to flooding. The 1993 flood on the river's
