The national government should immediately acquire not less than 1,000,000 acres of land bordering on the Gulf of Mexico and lying between Bayou Lafourche and Atchafalaya Bay and the Atchafalaya River. Then a great dike should be built by the national government from Barataria Bay, following the most practicable course along the shores of the Gulf to and along the eastern shore of the Atchafalaya Bay and River to Morgan City. Thence this great dike should skirt the northeastern shore of Grand Lake to the northern end of that lake. From there it should be continued north to the Mississippi River to a connection with that river near the headwaters of the Atchafalaya River. The material necessary for the construction of this great embankment and protecting levee from the Gulf north to the Mississippi River should be taken entirely from the eastern side of the embankment, and the channel thus constructed should be enlarged sufficiently to build an adequate protecting levee on the east bank of the channel. The artificial channel thus constructed should be so large as to constitute a controlled outlet and auxiliary flood channel which, with the ten mile wide Atchafalaya wasteway, would take off all of the flood flow of the Mississippi River at that point in excess of the high water level as it rests against the levees in all ordinary flood years. The purpose of this outlet and wasteway would be to make it impossible that in any year of unusual floods the levees or banks should be subjected to any greater hydrostatic pressure than in ordinary years. The point where this controlled outlet would leave the river would be approximately the same place where the great Morganza Crevasse broke through the levee and opened a way for the flood to sweep with its devastating force through the country between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. [Illustration: Map of Louisiana, showing the Great Controlled Outlet at Old River and the Atchafalaya Wasteway, Auxiliary Flood Water Channels and Canals; and showing also the Spillways and Controlled Wasteways from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne, and the Great Gulf Coast Dike.]