wh was there when the spillway was opened earlier this afternoon. >> reporter: don, the first gate of the morganza spillway has been opened. you can see the water gushing out through that first gate, halfway down this morganza flood control structure. there are 125 gates. for now only one has been opened. officials say they will continue to open up more in the coming days. for right now they are trying to slow down this process. you can already see the water making its way into this area that was just a big grassy area. the reason they are doing it very slowly is to give the wildlife and animals a chance to adjust to the vast amount of water that will soon be pouring through here. you can see the amount of water gushing through. all of this has to do with the amount of pressure that has been building up along the mississippi river. the trigger number that officials have been looking at is 1.5 million cubic feet of water per second. that's the amount of pressure that's been building along the mississippi river. anything more than that is simply too treacherous for the