If it weren’t for five very large pumps at the Tensas Cocodrie Pumping Plant near Monterey, much of Concordia Parish would now be under water.

The plant, which controls water levels in the Mississippi, Ouachita, Black and Red rivers, started pumping this weekend to manage high waters linked to an abnormally high Mississippi River stage.

The three-story high pumps are situated at the intersection of Cocodrie Bayou, Wild Cow Bayou and the Black River, southwest of Monterey.

&uot;We are like a bathtub plug letting the water out,&uot; said Richard Young, president of Rigmasters, the company contracted to run the plant through the Vicksburg District Corps of Engineers.

If the plant is the plug, then Concordia Parish and the southern end of Tensas Parish is the tub. And the tub is overflowing.

&uot;We’d be flooded now it if hadn’t been for the pumps,&uot; Young said. &uot;It’s just been a really good thing for the people of this parish.&uot;

When the rivers that border Concordia Parish are high, like they are now, it takes pumps to keep the water flowing downstream and not onto farmland, homes and businesses, Young said.

Young’s 3,000 horsepower motors pump 800 cubic feet of water per second away from the bayou banks and into the Black River, which later hits the Red River before meeting the Mississippi River.

The high waters are something Young said come around about every three years and are a direct reflection of the Mississippi River stages. A series of pumping plants, including Haha Bayou and Fools River, control the water before it reaches the Cocodrie plant.

The Corps started construction on the Cocodrie plant in 1978 and broke ground in 1987. The idea had been tossed around since the 1940s.

Young’s company received the contract in 1993.

Young also operates the pumping plants to the north and is in the process of testing a remote control system that will allow his employees to start the northern pumps from the Cocodrie plant.

In addition to the Louisiana plants, Young’s company runs a plant on Lake Chicot, Ark., and plants along 450 miles of levee in Mississippi stretching across two-thirds of the state.

Typically, Young said the Cocodrie plant pumps about four months of the year, but the out-of-season flood stage waters on the Mississippi River this year may make 2005 a record year.

&uot;This is the earliest we’ve ever pumped,&uot; Young said. &uot;It has the potential to be more water this year than ever.&uot;

Spring is the normal flooding season, when northern snows start to melt. More pumping will mean more work for the plant’s eight person, all-local, staff that works year-round to maintain the pumps for times like these.

&uot;Everything has to work for one pump to work,&uot; Project Superintendent Doug Ward said.

When the water reaches a set point on the gauge the pumps can be activated within one hour and will run 24 hours a day.

Away from the pumps and back at his office, Young keeps numerous photos of the flood of 1927 that destroyed homes and took lives in the Mississippi’s delta.

&uot;If we weren’t doing what we are doing now it would be like this now,&uot; Young said, pointing to 1927 homes covered to the rooftop in water. &uot;We haven’t seen anything like that since then.&uot;

After the flood of 1927 the Corps started appropriating money to flood control and plants like the one at Cocodrie.