Morganza, Louisiana: business and the local economy

Morganza is a small village in Pointe Coupee Parish, in south-central Louisiana. The 2020 Census counted 525 residents, and the Census Bureau puts its land area at about 1.2 square miles. The Mississippi River flood-control structure that carries the village’s name sits just north of it.

Most of what a business reader needs to know about Morganza comes from the parish around it and from that structure.

Work in and around the village

A place of 525 people is too small for the Census Bureau’s survey to describe its workforce with confidence, so the parish figures are the better guide. Pointe Coupee Parish had 20,758 residents in the 2020 Census, and the Census Bureau’s July 2025 estimate is 19,520. For 2020 to 2024, the Bureau estimates 8,471 employed residents aged 16 and over in Pointe Coupee Parish. The largest group, 24.3 percent, works in education, health care and social assistance. Manufacturing takes 10.8 percent, construction 10.0 percent, retail 9.3 percent, and transportation, warehousing and utilities 8.9 percent. Government workers make up 19.9 percent. Agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining account for 3.8 percent of jobs held by residents.

Many people work somewhere else. The same survey puts mean travel time to work at 26.3 minutes, and 3,911 of 8,120 workers, about 48 percent, work outside the parish. That points to jobs in neighboring parishes, although the table does not say which ones.

Farming matters more to the economy than its share of resident jobs suggests. The USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture counted 485 farms on 207,821 acres in the parish. Sales came to $191.2 million, fourth among Louisiana parishes, and 96 percent of that was crops. Sugarcane covered 58,173 acres and soybeans 57,259 acres.

The spillway

The Morganza Floodway is a Corps of Engineers structure meant for emergencies. It diverts Mississippi River water into the Atchafalaya Basin so that levees along the Baton Rouge to New Orleans stretch are not overwhelmed. Congress authorized it in the 1936 Flood Control Act. The control structure, with 125 gated openings and a design capacity of up to 600,000 cubic feet per second, was finished in 1954. The floodway behind it is about 20 miles long and 5 miles wide.

The Corps’ history of the project says moving the intake to this spot, in place of an earlier plan, spared roughly 100 square miles of farmland in northern Pointe Coupee Parish. Landowners inside the floodway had objected to being flooded for the benefit of others. By mid-1940 the Corps had received offers to sell comprehensive easements on land making up 80 percent of the floodway’s total land value.

The gates have opened twice. In 1973, the Corps raised 42 of the 125 gates to relieve pressure on the Old River control structure. In May 2011 it opened the first bays on May 14, had 17 open by May 18, and reached a discharge of 182,000 cubic feet per second. The structure was fully closed again by July 7.

What an opening costs farms and firms

The LSU AgCenter estimated that flooding in 2011 affected about 40,000 to 50,000 acres along the Mississippi River and the Morganza Spillway. Some farmers lost as many as 1,000 acres. Crop insurance covers part of such losses, depending on the policy.

The Corps sends written notice every year to everyone with an interest in the floodway. If it opens, personal property can flood, and water and gas wells must be sealed and capped to prevent contamination. For a lender, an insurer or a farm operator in the area, the floodway is a known risk that has become real only twice in more than 70 years.