NATCHEZ — Sometime early Tuesday morning, the almost-great flood of 2016 ended.

At 6 a.m., the Mississippi River at Natchez stood at 47.9 feet, officially below the 48-foot line that marks “flood stage” for the area.

The last time it was at this level was Jan. 2, four days after the Lower Mississippi River Flood Forecast Center said a near-record 60-feet rise was on its way, pushed by a major rain event in late December.

It eventually rose to 56.69 feet, falling short of the initial projection and the 57-foot benchmark that would have made it a “major flood,” and — while the high water looked threatening — didn’t represent the same threat as past recent high water events.

Shortly after the initial projection was forecast, Concordia Parish Homeland Security Director Payne Scott declared a state of emergency.

But since things passed without major incident, Scott said he let the declaration quietly expire at the end of January.

“We are still in what they call the ‘action stage,’ but the river is falling, so it looks good,” Scott said. “It’s basically at the keep-an-eye-on-it stage.”

Adams County Board of Supervisors President Mike Lazarus said Natchez city and Adams County officials met Tuesday with property owners in the areas that were affected by the high water.

The meeting was to coordinate a response when the governments send representatives to Washington, D.C., later this year to lobby for the funding of projects in the area.

“We are going to get some numbers together on economic impact, and we are going to draft something to see what we can do to alleviate (high water problems) now that flooding is going to be more common,” he said.

“We’ve been told that the reason it is happening here is because they’re building more levees up north, which sends all the water down here, and our question is going to be why they are getting levees up there and we aren’t getting anything to protect us when we get more water here?”

While the unexpected winter rise has fallen, officials have said some of the preparations that were made in advance of the January rise — such as temporary protective structures around wells on the Vidalia Riverfront — will be left in place should the river come up again in the Spring, as it usually does.

“From here, we wait for the spring and hope it is OK,” Scott said.