BEST NEWS FOR MISSISSIPPI WETLANDS IN YEARS

February 1 brought some great news - The Environmental Protection Agency is initiating a veto of the Yazoo Pumps project. There are countless individuals and organizations that have worked to stop this project for too many years to count, and it has been a major campaign of the GRN. The Pumps project is unlikely to go away without a fight, and there will be much more work to do yet, but EPA's action is a major, positive step in the right direction.

The Yazoo Pumps project is a major boondoggle that would drain over 200,000 acres of wetlands (roughly the size of New York City including all five boroughs). As the EPA wrote in its letter to the Corps, "The Yazoo Backwater Area contains some of the richest wetland and aquatic resources in the nation, including highly productive fisheries, a highly productive yet increasingly rare bottomland hardwood forest ecosystem, hemispherically important migratory bird foraging grounds, habitat for endangered species, and wetlands providing a suite of important ecological support functions."

The last time the EPA exercised its veto authority to stop a project was in 1989, and George H.W. Bush was president. Of course, the Yazoo Pumps project would destroy 25 times more wetlands than all the projects combined that the EPA has vetoed in the past. We should all be thankful that in this case, the EPA has lived up to its responsibility to protect the environment.

Jeff Grimes is Assistant Director of Water Resources for the GRN

CORPS ATTEMPS TO INVALIDATE PUBLIC'S VOICE

Of the hundreds of projects we have come across, the Yazoo Pumps stands out as one of the most (if not the most) environmentally damaging. This winter over 1,700 GRN members sent comments to the Corps opposing the pumps.

Wednesday the Vicksburg Post ran an article, where the Corps suggested that comments from people outside the Mississippi Delta carried less weight. It’s disconcerting that an official from a federal agency would hint, as he did, that voices from people throughout the country are somehow less valid.

We have joined with many organizations and citizens to voice our concern not only about the incredible threat to wetlands, but also the amount of federal tax payer money going to fund the project. Yes, some of these groups are national, but many are regional as well as local, and all have members that are impacted by the Yazoo Pumps project in one way or another.

When a national treasure is at risk, people from across the nation deserve the opportunity to speak their voices (and over 20,000 did). There’s also the issue of federal tax money. Typically locals have to pay a percentage of the project costs, but Thad Cochran removed that requirement the for Yazoo Pumps Project in 1996 legislation. That means that the cost, over $220 million, is on the shoulders of the federal tax payer. Is the Corps arguing that your voice counts less even though your tax dollars are going to fund the project?

It’s also disturbing that the Corps would say that this project is “environmentally friendly.” As the article noted, “Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water, said in a statement the project as proposed would affect 67,000 acres of ‘some of the richest wetland and aquatic resources in the nation’ and the Corps has not exhausted other methods for flood control in the Delta.”

I am a downstream resident and a federal taxpayer. As someone who gets her drinking water from the Mississippi and loves shrimp and seafood caught in the Gulf of Mexico, I worry about the degradation of over 67,000 acres of water absorbing, pollution filtering wetlands upstream. The Yazoo project impacts anyone downstream and anyone who pays taxes—our voices count.

Dump the Pumps!

Stephanie Powell is the Outreach Associate for the GRN's Healthy Waters Program

SEWAGE IN A STREAM...NO BIG DEAL

This story comes from the Picayune Item in Mississippi and is just unbelievable.

Apparently, a small wastewater treatment plant that serves a subdivision has been failing at least since Katrina. The sewage is going directly into a popular stream for canoing and swimming called Hobolochitto Creek, also called Boley Creek by locals.

Untreated sewage can cause all sorts of illnesses from viruses to parasites, and I would not recommend anyone swim in the Hobolochitto. What makes this story particularly infuriating is that the state has apparently known of these problems, yet nothing has been done. Discharging untreated sewage is a direct violation of the Clean Water Act and is also a major human health risk. The area in question got hammered by Hurricane Katrina, and I understand that it takes time to fix these problems. However, it is not more than two years since Katrina and the permissive attitude of the local and state governments in this case is quite troubling. At the GRN, we are working to make sure that states enforce the laws we have that exist to protect the public. This example demonstrates that the State of Mississippi has a long way to go yet.

Jeff Grimes is Assistant Director of Water Resources for the Gulf Restoration Network