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The Great Backwater Flood is Man Made
The final component was a pumping station to move the pooled water quickly out of the created areas where the water was trapped. All the components of the plan were implemented except the pumping stations
The Yazoo River basin in the South Delta is experiencing one of the worst floods of our lifetimes.
The great flood of 1927 changed everything. The US government realized they had to take responsibility for the flow of the Mississippi River because 41% of the water in the continental United States drained down the Mississippi River. They quickly realized that to control the flooding of the great river they had to control the rivers and tributaries that flowed into it. Over the next couple of years, legislation was passed that allowed manipulation of the rivers and tributaries that fed into the Mississippi River. This plan was called the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project (the MR&T), this plan includes the Yazoo Basin currently underwater.
The downside of that plan was private homeowners who previously were protected by the pre-1927 flood levees would no longer be protected. Other landowners in the same geographic area would gain protection. The ensuing fight over who would be protected was so great the entire plan was almost abandoned. As always, the fight centered around money, land values and compensation. President Calvin Coolidge stepped in and authorized the purchase of private land so the project could move forward. However, the floods on the Mississippi in 1937 caused the plan to once again be changed.
In 1941 Congress authorized the removal of the Eudora Floodway from the MR&T plan realizing it would cause higher stages on the Mississippi River, especially at the mouth of the Yazoo River. This would cause flooding in areas previously safe from floods in the Mississippi Delta, including Eagle Lake, Valley Park, and the surrounding areas. The Flood Control Act of 1941 authorized the Yazoo Backwater Project to protect the Delta area of Mississippi from these increased stages. This project included a combination of levees, drainage structures, and pumps.
After the second World War, the Corp of Engineers once again started to reevaluate its flood plan for the Mississippi River and its tributaries. In 1954 the US Senate requested an examination and evaluation of the flood plan for the tributaries. That request eventually resulted in the plan we have today.
The Mississippi Delta is 200 miles long and approximately 60 miles wide. The Yazoo Backwater area located in the area also known as the “South Delta” comprises approximately 1,550 square miles of an alluvial valley in the lower Yazoo Basin of Mississippi. It covers the area south of a line between Hollandale and Belzoni, east of the Mainline Mississippi River Levee and west of the Yazoo River Levee. The plan put in place to move all the water that would end up in the Yazoo Basin had four main components.
The first was the levees. They had to be constructed to stop the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers from inundating a lot of lands. The second component was a system of channels to move the water where they wanted it to go. The third step was to create control structures to help the water pool and maintain water levels and feed the water to drain in the Yazoo. The final component was a pumping station to move the pooled water quickly out of the created areas where the water was trapped.
All the components of the plan were implemented except the pumping stations to pump the water out of this great big pool created by the levee, channels and control structures. So the modern result is a huge pool of water blocked in by man-made levees, channels and control structures.
A man-made disaster.
The pumping station was not installed due to concerns raised by the EPA in its 2008 report over wetland protections, migratory habits of some wildlife and other issues. The EPA objection does not address how the water levels could be maintained and improved by the pumping stations. People knowledgable of the issues are perplexed by what they see as a lot of uncertainties in the EPA reports. The report creates a lot of questions of what may happen but is lacking in definite evidence of real impact.
The decision by the EPA to deny the pumps was done on a rarely used veto that was suspect. So questionable a lawsuit was filed to challenge it. The lawsuit did not end in the favor of the pumps being installed due to jurisdictional issues.
In 2008 the EPA was headed up by Stephen Johnson. Johnson was highly controversial because of his stance on allowing pesticides to be tested on human beings, his credibility called into question and being asked to resign for lying to Congress.
The economic impact of this man-made disaster is currently unknown. Since 2008 some estimates say the damage is several hundred million dollars.
There are thousands of pages of written material on this subject. For further reading you may wish to look at:
To get a detailed picture of the massive scale of the water control project one can look at the Mississippi Levee Board’s website(click here).
The Corp of Engineers Floodways information publication from 2007 can be read by clicking here.
The Corp of Engineers “Designing the Flood Project” can be found by clicking here.
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