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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What does Major General Thomas Sands do each year on the Mississippi in late summer or early fall?
(a) Trains new U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recruits.
(b) Conducts Homeland Security military exercises.
(c) Hosts the Water Recreation Festival.
(d) Takes a Low Water Inspection Trip.

2. The livelihood of approximately how many people is affected by the Old River Control?
(a) 3 thousand.
(b) 3 million.
(c) 31 thousand.
(d) 13 hundred.

3. In New Orleans' earliest days, French settlers begin to live there despite the fact that the area:
(a) Has practically no solid ground.
(b) Is full of poisonous snakes.
(c) Is plagued by giant storms on a weekly basis.
(d) Belongs to Spain.

4. In 1928, Congress enacts the Flood Control Act to start what?
(a) Rivers, Tributaries, and Levees Effort.
(b) Old and New Rivers Effort.
(c) Atchafalaya River and Levees Project.
(d) Mississippi River and Tributaries Project.

5. The author tells stories of the following people in conflict with forces of nature:
(a) Government officials.
(b) All of the them.
(c) Residents.
(d) Engineers.

Short Answer Questions

1. During high spring waters, what danger forms unseen beneath turbulent waters at the outflow to the Atchafalaya?

2. What is commonly fished from the bayou regions around the Atchafalaya?

3. What is the author's role in this book?

4. In the 1800s, swamps in Louisiana are drained and used as what?

5. In the early days of New Orleans, residents build their homes on what?

Short Essay Questions

1. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s, what did people in southern Louisiana do to protect their communities and land against floods?

2. In the 1700s, why did people settle in New Orleans and surrounding areas despite the region clearly being a floodplain?

3. Explain how the Mississippi River forms Louisiana over many centuries.

4. Describe what McPhee writes about Morgan City, Louisiana.

5. What are some of the predominant problems in the regions populated near the Atchafalaya and Mississippi rivers?

6. What is James B. Eads' contribution to the Mississippi River?

7. Explain who thinks the Old River Control project is an arrogant enterprise, and why they think this.

8. Explain what the author says about Old Cajun bayou life in the Atchafalaya region after the Corps took control.

9. The Old River Control project began operating in 1963. What happens ten years later?

10. What is the Old River Control project developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?

(see the answer keys)

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