IF THE U.S. ARMY Corps of Engineers has its way, the Two Lakes Flood Control and Economic Development Plan will be dead in the water.

However, local officials say the corps doesn’t have the authority to kill the plan, and are challenging the federal agency’s decision to refuse to study the proposal that supporters say would curb flooding along the river and generate millions, if not billions, of dollars in economic development for the capital city.

At its meeting on October 12, the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District (levee board) voted 7-0 to ask the corps to agree to a previous resolution to study the plan, as well as all other viable options for flood control on the river between Hinds and Rankin counties.

The corps denied the levee board’s request from August to study the plans and threatened to cancel its cost-sharing agreement with the board, putting the district in danger of losing $133 million in federal funding for the project.

“If they haven’t studied all plans, WRDA doesn’t give them the right to terminate the agreement,” board attorney Trudy Allen said at the meeting. “If the local sponsor says it has no plan, they can terminate the agreement.” The board’s most recent action is a test to see if corps leaders can make their threat stick.

WRDA is the Water Resources Development Act of 2007, which set aside millions in federal funding to build a flood control project on the Pearl. That bill, along with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), require all viable options for flood reduction to be fully evaluated before a proposal can be implemented.

The levee board is the local sponsor that oversees flood control on the river.

If the corps continues to refuse the levee board’s request, WRDA includes a provision that allows the levee board to break away from the corps and study the projects themselves.

The move to challenge the corps comes about two weeks after the groups met to discuss their agreement and a month or so after Doug Kamien, the corps’ chief of planning, programs and project management, said the plan the levee board originally commissioned his agency to study was never evaluated.

“They took it upon themselves to modify the Two Lakes plan,” board engineer Carl Ray Furr said at the meeting. “We need to study Two Lakes and see if we can move forward with the next step.”



AT THE meeting on September 28, the corps further stated that it doesn’t support any plan that calls for permanent inundation, citing environmental factors. “Any lakes plan, based upon studies to date, has greater environmental impacts than the levee plan,” corps communications officer Kavanaugh Breazaele wrote in an e-mail. “Therefore, we believe further studies would not yield a recommendation for a lakes plan ... as a federal flood risk reduction project.”

The corps had originally intended to meet with the levee board on September 9, but the meeting was cancelled due to other conflicts. While telling the board that they wouldn’t study additional plans, the corps did seem to waver, telling members that additional engineering studies would cost $4 million and take up to four years to complete.

Proposals to quell floodwaters range from large to small, with the Two Lakes and LeFleur Lakes plans on the larger end of the spectrum, and the Lower Lake Plan and Comprehensive Levee Plan on the other.

Two Lakes is a $336 million concept created by North Jackson businessman John McGowan and includes the creation of two lakes along the Pearl stretching from the Ross Barnett Reservoir to south of I-20 near Richland. The project includes 120 miles of shoreline, as well as a number of islands, most of which would be set aside for development.

The project would give residents in Hinds and Rankin counties access to the water, and be 99 percent effective in reducing flooding in the event of another deluge like the Easter Flood of 1979.

In contrast, the corps-supported levee plan would cost about the same and only reduce flooding in Jackson by 77 percent. It would provide little to no opportunities for new economic development. The plan calls for bolstering the same levees that failed the metro 30 years ago.

DETRACTORS say the idea to implement levees could never pay for itself. Northsider Leland Speed, a board member, said the district could take out a loan to pay for the levees, but never generate enough revenue in sales and property taxes to pay it back.

“We are looking at two plans, the levee plan and the Two Lakes plan, and one has a way to pay it back without raising taxes,” he said. “We need to study and make sure it works.”

He pointed out several other flaws with the levee plan that will create new problems for downtown Jackson. Speed believes adding onto the levees would actually increase flooding downtown at Lynch and Town creeks.

“They have a watershed 60 percent the size of Orleans Parish,” he said. To address the problem, the corps wants to spend $89 million on pumps, something Two Lakes doesn’t require to be effective.

“Getting the loan will be tough, but there’s no question in my mind that Two Lakes will pay for itself,” Speed said. “The cost-benefit ratio is off the charts.”