VIDALIA — The Mississippi River crested Monday at 57.12 feet, but water containment efforts are ongoing across the Miss-Lou.

Bill Murray, director of the office of emergency preparedness for Concordia Parish, was out in the sun Monday afternoon while inmates loaded sandbags onto a flatbed truck.

“We’re helping out another levee district,” Murray said. “There is a sand boil on the back side of Lake St. John.”

Murray said the river was well contained in the Vidalia area, so he and his crew were helping out neighboring districts that have experienced more water containment issues.

The sand boil on the north side of Lake St. John is all too familiar to Concordia Police Jury President Jimmy Wilkinson, who said work on the 2-foot boil began early Saturday morning.

“We’ve been out there every day with it,” Wilkinson said. “We’ll be back out there (today).”

A sand boil occurs, Wilkinson said, when the water level rises and seeps under the levy, carrying with it silt and debris that will undermine the earthen structure if it’s not carefully managed.

“It just gets bigger and bigger if you don’t address it,” Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson said a chain of inmates have transported sandbags across the swampy marsh where the boil appeared every day, and that several agencies have aided in controlling the drainage.

“We are working with the Corps of Engineers, the levee district and Tensas Parish,” Wilkinson said. “Everybody is pulling together to hold this thing down.

The sandbags, Wilkinson said, ring the sand boil, allowing the water around the boild to rise, the weight of which puts pressure back on the boil and also holds down sediment and creating a “filter” of sorts to help reduce the amount of water and material that flows from the levee.

Wilkinson said the now dropping river levels would aid in the efforts to stop the sand boil.

“It’s definitely going to help this process,” Wilkinson said. “We should see a decrease in the river, and no matter how small, every little bit helps.”

In Natchez, flood control efforts are relatively stable, though Natchez’s Silver Street, which runs parallel to the riverbank, is still closed to through-traffic, though all businesses there remain open.

Adams County Emergency Management Director Robert Bradford said following the river’s crest, the county should see a decrease in flooded areas.

“In the next two weeks, we should be good,” Bradford said. “It should go down from here.”

At 57.12 feet, the river’s crest Sunday is the third-highest crest in Natchez’s recorded history.