biggest cities in louisiana. but it means tiny communities could soon be under many feet of water. this is what it looked like in 1973. the one and only time the morganza spillway had to be opened. there s no guarantee it will even work. the mississippi river is already dangerously high in new orleans. the army corps of engineers is hoping that by diverting water through two spillways will lower the river level and spare the city. so far, the corps says opening the morganza spillway appears to be having the desired effect. the biggest test is still days away, the highest water, hundreds of miles up river. this is greenville, mississippi, that you re looking at right now. a live report from there, and it is being inundated, straight ahead on cnn. let s get right to ed lavandera who was there when the morganza spillway was opened just about three hours ago. ed, tell us about it. ed lavandera is joining us on the phone. ed, can you hear us? reporter: just a while ago, this is
swollen levee system, a taxed levee system, and they don t know if it s going to hold even with this. they re being inundated with water. people who have dealt recently with tornadoes just a couple weeks ago, and hurricane katrina and rita that hit the area and have done so much devastation to louisiana. you can t take your eyes off the pictures. imagine if this was happening in your community. this much water, knowing your homes, your hafarms, your livelihood would be flooding. wheler get to the players. ed lavendera on the ground. he ll join us in a second. look at inflooding. this is what is being flooded. this is all just moments ago. once they started to release the pressure on the morganza spillway and let that water out, look at the levees. water pouring across the levees. that s the mississippi river there. look at that. unbelievable. we re going to follow this breaking news story for you because we don t know what is going to happen here. we don t know how this is go
upriver and you can go back to the ohio river and there are a bunch of dams and reservoirs that hold back water. so we take all of these different dams, reservoirs, and floodways into account when we put this system into place when it was built. so this particular floodway, every year, we sent out letters to folk who is own property in the floodway, telling them that we have a flowage easement and we may utilize that from time to time, and it just happens to be this year. we re going to have to utilize that flowage easement over that property. colonel fleming, appreciate your time tonight. difficult duty for you in the days and hours ahead. we ll keep in touch and we thank you for joining us tonight. let s continue our coverage in the flood zone. our martin savage is in greenville, mississippi, one of the communities hard hit. martin, you hear about the pain, the rawness and the tough decisions the corps of engineers has to make down in louisiana. take us where you are and what peopl
i take very seriously. i m not going to delegate that to somebody else, but we operate this as a system. there are lots of on-ramps for water coming into the mississippi, the ohio river and the missouri river, and there are just a couple of off-ramps. and this morganza floodway is one of them and we ve got to take some excess water off the top of the river, because of the historic levels that are coming down. and we are told that this opening, the beginning of it, it s a long process, but the beginning of it, the first opening could come as early as 2:00 local time tomorrow afternoon. is that correct? well, yeah. i ve been given permission from the mississippi river commission to operate that floodway, and when we reach the trigger of 1.5 million cubic feet per second, then we will, in fact, open that floodway and again, take the pressure off the levee systems that are downstream from that particular structure. and colonel, what do you say to someone who comes up to you. you hear
ready for this water. get ready. move their property out of harm s way. reporter: which is why in central louisiana, it s moving day. the state of louisiana is quickly building some emergency levees but as far as the army corps of engineers is concerned there will be no reimbursement to those who are displaced by this floodway. they say they bought the right to flood this land a long time ago. they remind the users every year that it could flood at any time. jim avila, abc news morgan city, louisiana. we re learning more about those journals recovered from osama bin laden s compound. bin laden wrote about whether it was feasible to kill president obama or other senior administration officials including military leaders. he also is apparently hopeful that a massive attack could derail the president s re-election. the taliban has claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a paramilitary training center in northwestern pakistan. at least 68 people were killed. nearly all were vic