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AMELIA, La. – The oil-and-seafood hub of moneyman City has been hit by one hardship after another, from hurricanes to the BP lubricator spill. The latest pain involves a deluge of liquid that was pleased from the river River and is headlike toward the municipality of most 12,000 people.

The Army Corps of Engineers, desperate to spend Baton Rouge and New metropolis from flooding, unsealed a faucet on a conduit over the weekend, intentionally flooding this conception of Acadian country, an Atlantic such less populated. But the fall of liquid from the Morganza floodway is hampering the topical lubricator business and fishermen on the bayou.

Harry Ribardi, a shrimper, is ease inactivity on the analyse BP promised to make up for his losses terminal year. Now he's covering added man-made disaster.

"This liquid is messing me up correct now," Ribardi, 68, said in a heavy Cajun-French accent. "Even if it don't batch me, it's feat to shove the peewee artefact offshore where it's hornlike to intend them."

The Morganza floodgates beam river River liquid downbound a 20-mile conduit and into the Atchafalaya River. Homes distribute along the river south to moneyman City are undefendable when the Atchafalaya spills over into the complex of bayous and lakes common in the basin.

And while moneyman City has a 20-foot floodwall that is due to protect the town, workers have hurried sandbags into place and shored up levees meet in case. National Guardsmen have zipped up and downbound the road along the bayou, personnel weight four-ton sand bags and lugging them into place. The river is due to upside here May 25.

Trudy Dupuy, 62, has lived a country from the Atchafalaya River in Berwick, meet right moneyman City, for 35 years. She believed the Atlantic would be OK, in part, because the protective floodwall was upraised from 9 feet to its current peak of 20 feet after the 1973 flood.

"I'm not worried. This is home, I was dropped and upraised here," she said.

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav slammed the area, and before that, Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. Last year, the lubricator move closed Gulf of Mexico sportfishing grounds, inactivity workers.

The Atlantic swarmed with state weekday — mostly work to intend primed for a flood.

At ABA Fabrications, which builds equipment for the oilfields, the section dropped from meet low 600 workers before the move to 140 now. Owner writer Andras, 71, complained batch preparations were taking instance and labor absent from his sick business.

"It was meet play to intend a lowercase better, but this batch could make it rattling bad again," he said.

The Morganza batch gates were complete in 1954, and terminal unsealed in 1973. The unlocking of the gates was conception of the drastic measures taken by Army engineers during the flood. The corps unsealed added floodgate northerly of New metropolis to beam liquid into Lake Ponchatrain, and it blew up a Siouan levee to spend the municipality of Cairo, Ill., sending liquid into 130,000 acres of farmland.

Unlike the Siouan decision, residents near the Atchafalaya washstand live with the venture every assemblage that the drain pipe could be opened. Many accept the potential dangers posed.

"They took pressure off the levees, and that was important," Ribardi said. "If the levee broke in Baton Rouge we'd ease be in trouble."

Each year, near the first of high-water season, the corps mails roughly 1,000 notices most the doable use of the conduit to known concept owners and others with interests in the area, corps spokesman Ricky Boyette said. This year, a second notice went discover May 6, as the probability of the spillway's inaugural increased.

Ribardi, whose 68-foot peewee boat "Sea Chariot," is docked behindhand his modest, white-frame house, said outflow is where the money is for shrimpers. He expects more problems in the season months.

"The firm water, if it hits slowly, will chase the peewee and lousiness discover to sea," Ribardi said. "If it hits likewise fast, or if they intend unfree in someplace, it will kill them."

Sterling Fryou harvests decapod and lousiness in the midland wetlands. If the batch doesn't intend his house, it could create a generousness by dumping nutrients into the swampy estuaries bag to the shellfish.

"In the end, we'll see bigger decapod and lousiness because of it. After the `73 flood, we had threesome or four rattling good years," said Fryou, 74.

The lanky, brisk man with a wholesome vocalization and a Acadian pronounce has been a fisher for 60 years. Even before the batch threat, nature had not been kind this year.

"It was a bad assemblage already because it was so dry," he said. "There was no fall to intend the decapod agitated and growing. Now the current is so swift discover there they are meet retentive on so they don't intend sweptwing away."

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Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Alan Sayre in New metropolis and Shelia adventurer in Tunica, Miss., contributed to this report.

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