MANY NORTHSIDERS question the motives behind a recent vote to curb flooding on the Pearl River.

The Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District recently voted 4-3 in a split decision along county lines to build levees, not lakes, along the Pearl.

The move essentially scuttles several more ambitious flood control and economic development projects under consideration and nullifies the nearly $3 million and 12 years spent studying them.

Downtown Jackson Partners President Ben Allen, a longtime supporter of the Two Lakes flood control project, is disappointed with the decision. Said Allen: “This is typical provincial Mississippi, where politicians put their own selfish interests ahead of the good of the people.”

Some North Jackson leaders say the levee board has turned the important issues of flood protection and economic development into a Hinds County versus Rankin County issue. Others claim that some levee board members have spent too much money with nothing to show for it.

The $200 million project calls for constructing and reinforcing levees along the Pearl between Hinds and Rankin counties. It provides little opportunity for economic development.

About $130 million of that would be federally funded, through the Water Resources Development Act, a bill passed last year by Congress. The other $70 million would have to be funded locally.

Ward Seven Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon said the plan is a shortsighted solution for flood control. “I think they’re making a terrible mistake,” she said. “The levee board needs to look at this from an economic and flood control standpoint. The river can be a great asset for the city.”

Barrett-Simon said she plans to speak with city attorneys and bring the issue up for discussion at the next council meeting to determine the city’s next move.

LEVEE BOARD member Con Maloney believes the board will still consider building a lake along the river. “This vote was simply so they could go on record saying they supported flood control,” he said. “After a cooling off period, we need to sit down and discuss the issue again.”

Maloney still hopes the board will consider the Lower Lake plan, a plan that would create a single, six-mile lake on the river between Lakeland Drive and I-20. The plan, a hybrid of a larger flood control and economic development project and the comprehensive levee plan, was approved by the levee board last summer as a cheaper alternative to the $1.4 billion LeFleur Lakes plan.

Officials estimated it would cost roughly $400 million to build.

The issue was brought to a vote last week after board member Leland Speed told them they should build the Two Lakes plan or nothing. Speed, one of the dissenting votes along with Maloney and Jimmy Hydal, said downtown Jackson would suffer if the Lower Lake plan or levee plan was built.

He pointed to a recent study to support his claim. Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a draft feasibility study of the levee plan and LeFleur Lakes project to the board.

The study, which hadn’t been made public at the time of publication, said the levees would reduce flooding by 79 percent in a flood similar to the Easter Flood of 1979. The LeFleur Lakes project, though, would have reduced floodwaters in Jackson by more than 90 percent.

Speed said the LeFleur Lakes project, unlike the levee plan, would create two large lakes stretching from the mouth of the Ross Barnett Reservoir to a mile south of I-20, two 100-acre islands and more than 100 miles of developable waterfront property in Hinds and Rankin counties.

John McGowan, the originator of the similar Two Lakes proposal, also is critical of the levee plan. If built, he said it would actually increase flooding at Lynch and Town creeks.

“The levees will cause the river to swell in heavy storms and prevent the creeks from emptying into the river,” he said. “That water would back up downtown.”

The levees could also increase flooding downriver. In 1996, residents downriver raised those concerns to the Mississippi state Legislature when the Pearl River Basin Development District, a body independent of the levee board, considered building the same levee system.

After making their case, state lawmakers blocked the district’s efforts to build them.

RICHLAND MAYOR Mark Scarborough, one of the four who voted in favor of the levees last week, said the board will likely face similar opposition to them this time.

Scarborough, an opponent of the Two Lakes plan because it wouldn’t provide flood protection to Richland, said his vote was to move the levee board forward. He said the board has spent too much time and money studying projects and has made little progress off paper.

“Let’s get a product in place,” he said. “If we come up with the funding later, we can add a lake.”

Since 2002, the levee board has spent $2.8 million to study flood control. In 2003, the board hired the Mississippi Engineering Group (MEG), made up of Pickering Engineering and Waggoner Engineering, to conduct an economic feasibility study on the LeFleur Lakes and levee plan.

MEG is also doing the preliminary engineering work for the airport parkway, a $400 million thoroughfare that would link downtown Jackson to the Jackson-Evers International Airport. MEG has received more than $13 million in engineering fees for that project.

The flood control study was slated to be finished in 2005. But three years later, the levee board has only received a draft study from the corps and they’re not allowed to release it. Officials with Pickering and Waggoner couldn’t be reached for comment last week.

McGowan, though, is anxious for the study to be made public. The North Jackson oilman said he could put to rest several “deceptions” of the levee plan if the study were released. “They won’t release it because the second they do, they know I would pigeonhole it,” he said.