But can you spell "Atchafalaya"?

We can all spell "Mississippi": "M-eye-SS-eye-SS-eye-PP-eye."

That rhythmic chant is embedded deeply in my memory. Whenever it comes to the fore, it runs around and around in a loop, just like it did when I was a kid. And it's been on my mind lately, what with the troubling news from the Mississippi River region.

No doubt you've heard: record-high water levels from one of the wettest springtimes in history have inundated huge swaths of the lower Midwest. Now the surge is hitting further south. In an effort to save the New Orleans region from what, in some places, could be a flood dozens of feet deep -- perhaps worse than Katrina -- the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has opened the humongous gates above Baton Rouge, diverting what they hope will be enough of the water to prevent the worst-case flood. (For a one-stop summation, see this post by DailyKos diarist Stranded Wind.

With this news comes the realization that we better all learn how to spell "Atchafalaya," and that doesn't roll off the tongue quite like "M-eye-SS-eye-SS-eye-PP-eye."

See, the Atchafalaya flows close by the Mississippi, and it's a river whose path to the Gulf of Mexico is much straighter and steeper than that of the Mississippi. Since all rivers seek the fastest, straightest-possible route to sea level, it's only a matter of time before the Atchafalaya captures all of the Mississippi's flow, which would destroy the lower Mississippi's river-dependent industrial economy. New Orleans would literally become a backwater.

The Army Corps of Engineers realized this decades ago and set about to stop it. The Corps built an earth- and water-work the likes of which had never been seen on Earth. The flood gates opened by the Corps this week are part of this massive engineering project.

But here's the point of this post: The Corps is in a difficult position. If it didn't open the floodgates -- certain disaster down river. Now that it has, another disaster might come to pass -- the inevitable day when the Atchafalaya River captures the Mighty Mississippi might be hastened.

If you want the deep background on this, be sure to read this 1987 New Yorker essay by the great John McPhee. It's a long -- 27 web pages -- and fascinating account of how the Corps' Mississippi/Atchafalaya project came to be, how it works, and why it is destined eventually to fail. The question is: could this flood be the one that makes it fail?