The long-promised but never-delivered flood protection for the South Delta is back on track. Fingers crossed, it will stay that way and those flood-weary folks who have been regularly drowning in everyone else’s water to the north will have long-term relief.
Last week, a collaboration of several federal agencies — most notably the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — rolled out their latest plan.
Most everyone — other than of course the die-hard environmentalists — appears to be on board with the concepts unveiled.
The plan calls for voluntary buyouts of homes most at risk of flooding, help to elevate homes that want to stay, the construction of ring levees and, most importantly, the installation of a massive pumping station that will put water into the Mississippi River when it backs up in the bowl that earlier flood-control projects have created.
The pump is the most expensive and most controversial part of the plan. For decades, it has been opposed as either wasteful spending or as a threat to wetlands and wildlife in that part of the state.
To get this latest version through required a compromise as to determining at what elevation the pump would kick into gear. When the original plan for the so-called Yazoo Backwater Project was drawn up, it had the pump turning on when water elevation reached 80 feet, according to the Mississippi Levee Board. The compromise calls for turning the pump on at 90-foot elevation during the crop season, which the plan defines as March 25 through Oct. 31, and at 93 feet the rest of the year.
Farmers would like the crop season date to be a few weeks earlier and the pump-on elevations to be lower, but they are willing to live with this compromise to get the project built.
It would be nice if the environmental groups would do the same, rather than trying to stall or kill it with additional litigation, as they have done so often in the past.
When the flood-control plan for the Lower Mississippi River Valley was updated in the early 1940s, it had features that were supposed to ensure no part of the affected area got left out. The South Delta was promised a massive pumping station not to eliminate flooding in the region but to keep it to a livable level.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have reneged on that promise ever since. In this latest flip-flop, the Biden administration initially reversed the Trump administration’s 11th hour decision to let the project go forward, but rather than killing it outright, the Democratic president’s team sent everyone back to the drawing board to see if a compromise solution between pump proponents and opponents could be fashioned. Maybe this is finally it.
For going on 80 years, one mostly poor, thinly populated part of the country has paid the price for keeping others along the Mississippi River and its tributaries drier. The South Delta has become everyone else’s safety valve in times of high water, putting not only cropland in that part of Mississippi in danger but also homes and wildlife itself, and not just once in a while but most years.
As with other recent proposals, this one would appear to provide a net benefit for the environment that will be greater with the pump than without it.
Yes, it’s going to be expensive. The estimated cost has not been disclosed so far, but the previous estimate was around a half-billion dollars.
Whatever the number is, it must be remembered that the price tag would have been considerably less had opponents not stood in the way of doing what’s fair for so long.
