Just came back from there yesterday. They closed the beaches, but failed to post any signage that I saw warning people of the closures and the dangers involved. They did stick up orange flags at each of the beach entrances. I saw lots of people in the water including many kids.
Funny thing is, there were plenty of signs and orange tape saying that fireworks were prohibited (to protect the terns). Just none saying that the beaches were closed.
That article is poorly worded, the beaches are not closed, they just don’t want people in the water. As long as you stay on the sand everything’s fine, which 95% of the people do anyway.
This isn’t a normal occurrence, it’s happening because the army corps of engineers is diverting Mississippi River water into the Mississippi sound to reduce the volume of water flowing through New Orleans and protect the levees. The heavy rains and high snow volume in the upper Midwest this spring has the river at record levels and one of the relief mechanisms is a spillway into lake pontchartrain they’ve opened, it’s flooding the Mississippi coast with fresh water and causing havoc. When the spillway is shut it’ll fix itself but they can’t do it right now because there’s too much water in the Mississippi River.
The casinos on the coast are doing very well, they’ve got a lot of really nice ones and they’re very busy.