Vicksburg District hyrdologic technician Al Goodnight, left, and team leader for gauge and discharge Alvin Taylor, right, inspect a staff gauge for measuring the water level of Eagle Lake Thursday. At one time, most waterways were checked by hand.(C. Todd Sherman The Vicksburg Post)

[06/22/03]EAGLE LAKE At about 7 every morning, 75-year-old Alfrod Williams drives his pickup a block from his home to a wooden dock where he reads the water level and calls in his findings so they can be used by water watchers and water users across the area.

He’s the last of the breed in Warren County.

Until about 20 years ago, the water levels of the Steele Bayou, Muddy Bayou and Hatchers Bayou, like waterways across much of the United States, were all checked by human beings. Now, for the most part, satellites do the job.

But Williams and other gauge-readers are needed in the event of floods, said Alvin Taylor, a team leader for gauge and discharge for the Vicksburg District for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“Sometimes you have to estimate because the waves are jumping two feet, but today was real calm,” said Williams Thursday. Williams climbs downhill to a dock in front of The Lo Sto, a community grocery and all-around hangout, to check the water’s level on a wooden staff. He then uses the back of an empty carton of cigarettes to record the data, and, as he’s done every day for 21 years, he calls a company contracted by the Vicksburg District and is done for the day.

“It’s not no big bunch of money but it helps pay the grocery bill and more odds and ends I have to take care of,” Williams said.

Williams tranfers his information onto forms that are mailed to the District monthly.

The Vicksburg District, which includes 68,000 square miles in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisana, operates 116 satellite systems that check stages and has contracts for about 44 gauge-readers, such as Williams.

Some gauge readers were replaced with satellites in the late 1970s or the early 1980s, Taylor said.

Al Goodnight, now a hydrologic technician for the District, was once responsible for checking the stages, but now takes care of the satellite systems.

“The factory can tell you how to operate it, but they can’t teach what might go wrong with it,” Goodnight said.

Called data collection platforms, the systems record data every hour, and some transmit the information to a Corps satellite every four hours. The radar platform at the bridge over Steele Bayou off Mississippi 465, shoots a beam into the water and then gives a reading. The same gadgets are at bridges over Hatchers Bayou at U.S. 61, Muddy Bayou near Eagle Lake and others are in more remote places.

Taylor said the data the systems provide are used for flood control, planning for a pumping station and navigation.

Albert Smith, a fleet supervisor for Ergon’s Marine and Industrial Supply, said he checks the Mississippi River stages three times a week through the Corps.

Checking the stages gives Ergon the ability to allow tow boats, tug boats and barges to pass through certain areas of the river safely, he said.