THE LEFLEUR LAKES flood control and economic development plan was first introduced in 1996.

With it, came the promise of nearly ending flooding in downtown Jackson while offering the capital city a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cash in on the Pearl River.

Twelve years and $2.8 million later, the river looks exactly the same. The LeFleur Lakes plan has been shelved and Jackson is no safer than it was before the Easter Flood of 1979.

And following a recent vote by the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District (levee board), many Northsiders’ hopes of seeing the plan built have been dashed.

Many say the levee board has been a poor steward of taxpayer money, spending thousands on the project in recent years. Records obtained by the Northside Sun show that the levee board, in 2005 and 2006, spent $850,000 to conduct a feasibility study on the LeFleur project.

Another $60,000 in taxpayer money was contributed to the LeFleur Lakes Development Foundation. While many say the money has been wasted on studying a project that will never come to fruition, levee board Chairman Billy Orr, a Rankin County resident, disagrees.

“The money had to be spent,” he said. “If we didn’t we wouldn’t have the study.” In 2003, the levee board commissioned the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct an economic and environmental feasibility study on the LeFleur Lakes project and the Comprehensive Levee Plan.

A draft of that study was leaked to the media in early 2007, but the study has never been released for public review. In it, the corps said the lakes plan, the project preferred by the levee board at the time, would cost too much and be too environmentally damaging if built.

THE PROJECT would have created two massive lakes stretching from the mouth of the Ross Barnett Reservoir to south of I-20 near Richland. It would have created two islands and more than 100 miles of developable waterfront property in Hinds and Rankin counties.

The corps, though, said they wouldn’t fund the project because it would cost an estimated $1.4 billion to build, a figure once considered over-inflated by the levee board but now used by some Rankin County representatives to bolster their argument for voting in favor of the levee plan.

“Had it been feasible, the money would have been available,” Orr said, adding that the environmental study and a charrette last year also played a role in their decision.

The charrette, hosted at the Mississippi TelCom Center in downtown Jackson, cost the levee board another million dollars and brought about four plans for flood control and economic development along the river. One of those plans was supported by the levee board last year.

Last July, the board voted to further study the Lower Lake plan, a hybrid of the LeFleur Lakes and the levee plan, which would create one small lake between Lakeland Drive and I-20.

Levee board members say they’re still considering that less ambitious plan, but building levees are priority. “Our first charge is flood control,” Orr said. “There will still be economic development with the levees, but it might not be the pretty scenes” everyone envisioned.

Instead, he, along with levee board member Mark Scarborough, believes levees will foster economic growth within the floodplain because it will prevent more land from being flooded.

The levee plan, which is estimated to cost around $200 million, will be funded in part by federal funds made available in the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. It will involve strengthening current levees and building new ones along the river.

THE LEVEE BOARD set a 4.0 millage rate for residents living within the protection of the levees. Essentially, a mill is about one one-thousandth of a dollar. Records show, that in 2006, the district received $56,000 from residents in Hinds County and another $355,000 from residents in Rankin County.

The money is collected by the county tax collector and then paid to the levee board. A majority of those funds, said Garry Miller, the district’s superintendent of operations, is used for operations and maintenance of the 14 miles of levees already in place.

Miller said the board is also charged with maintaining and operating pumps, mowing grass along the levees and maintaining roughly 67,000 feet of drainage channels.

In 2006, the board paid $84,000 for equipment rental and another $46,000 for equipment repair. Another $131,000 was paid out for salaries, payroll expenses and taxes.

Board member Leland Speed, a Northsider, believes the board will spend another $2 million to study the levee project. He’s recently questioned why the corps hadn’t released the first study. The study was supposed to be completed in 2005, but, three years later the study has yet to be released.

Project Manager Gary Walker, who oversees corps projects within the Pearl River basin, said the study won’t be released until it’s completed. “We have the draft report finished, which we released to the levee board to be previewed,” he said.

“The study now has to go through an independent technical review,” he said. It was further delayed with the introduction of the Lower Lake plan, which the levee board asked it to study last year. With that plan scuttled, the corps still must continue studies on the levee plan.

“We have to do an update on that plan,” he said. “In parts of the report, we’ll have to include current day standards (for building levees).” He said the corps will also have to look at coincidental flooding, including flooding that might result in the Town and Lynch Creek areas, he said.

Many, like North Jackson oilman John McGowan, the originator of the Two Lakes flood control and economic development plan, the predecessor to the LeFleur Lakes plan, said the levees, if constructed, could actually increase flooding downtown by causing the creeks to back up.

Orr said those issues will be studied by the corps. He believes the study should be finished in the next year, because substantial work on it has already been completed.

He wouldn’t venture a guess on when levees would be constructed.