Blogging for a Healthy Gulf

The Yazoo Backwater Pumps project is a 77 year old Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) project that would have resulted in one of the world’s largest water pumping plants in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the country. The pumps would, at last estimate, cost taxpayers $220 million with at least $1 million in yearly upkeep.  

The project would destroy between 67,000-200,000 acres of wetlands in the river bottoms of the Lower Yazoo basin in the Mississippi Delta. Marketed as a flood control project, the Pumps were actually intended to create marginal farmland.  These wetlands now flood about every other year, and drying them out permanently would erase flood protection for residents along the Mississippi River and remove high quality stop-over habitat for the millions of ducks, geese, shorebirds and other migratory species that use them.

This is literally the project that just won’t die. We first...

In Houston, Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters displaced tens of thousands of residents, flooded more than 70 toxic sites and led to the release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of pollutants. In the immediate aftermath of the storm, Gulf Restoration Network and partners flew over Houston and other impacted areas in Texas and Louisiana documenting some of these pollution events (pictures here and here).

As the floodwaters receded and people began to pick up the pieces, a new collaboration – the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience or CEER – was formed with a focus on raising awareness of the connection between pollution, place and the public’s health.

Gulf Restoration Network is proud to be a member of this coalition that “aims to drive community voices into the post-Hurricane Harvey decision-making process to promote equity and resilience by emphasizing land, water, air, waste, and housing policies that reduce...

In the first two months of 2018, four governments along the Lower Pearl River have written new resolutions against the project upstream in Jackson known as “One Lake.” This real estate dream is being pitched as riverfront development and flood control for the Jackson Metro area and is being pushed ahead of other less disruptive alternatives for the river. In 2013, at the beginning of the scoping period for the project’s required Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), the sponsoring Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District voted for the lake as their locally preferred alternative over levee improvements, channel modifications without a dam, or floodplain buyouts. The District didn’t wait until the studies were under way very long to tip their hand, which is slanted toward riverfront real estate development.

 The lake plan and the other alternatives have been undergoing Agency Technical Review (ATR) at the Army Corps of Engineers...

The Washington Parish Council passed a resolution against more upstream damming on the Pearl River as a result of Jackson Mississippi’s proposed “One Lake” project. The resolution passed unanimously at the Council’s meeting on Monday night, January 22nd in Franklinton, La.

With this action, both Parish governments on the Louisiana side of the lower Pearl River oppose this lake project due to concerns about reduced river flow and degradation of river habitats, wetlands, and potential harm to industries and municipal sewage plants permitted to discharge to the Pearl River. The St. Tammany Parish Council passed a similar resolution opposing the project in 2013. The Mississippi Commission on Marine Resources passed its own resolution in 2013 - primarily to protect oyster production from more threats to fresh water flow caused by upstream damming on the Pearl River.

People up in Jackson may wonder why there is such a stir...