LOCAL LEADERS want to know why it will take $4 million and four years to study flood control on the Pearl River.

The Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District (levee board) recently voted to ask the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District to follow a previous resolution directing it to study all viable proposals for flood control in the metro area.

As part of the resolution, the board that oversees flooding on the river between Hinds and Rankin counties is also asking the agency to justify its claims that it will take twice as much as originally expected to evaluate the plans.

At a levee board gathering on October 12, board attorney Trudy Allen said she met with Doug Kamien, chief of the corps’ planning, programs and project management division, in mid-September, and was told that it would take two years and $2 million to properly study all proposals.

The corps had a different story only weeks later, saying that it would cost $4 million and take four years to review the proposed projects, including the Two Lakes Flood Control and Economic Development Plan, a popular proposal among Northsiders.

Other proposals include the LeFleur Lakes Plan and the Lower Lake Plan, a concept that incorporates the levee plan and a small lake near Richland.

Levee board engineers say the numbers don’t add up. They told the board that 80 percent of the engineering work needed to study the plans had already been completed, meaning that another four years is unwarranted.

“They pulled (the figures) out of the air,” said levee board engineer Joe Waggoner, referring to the corps’ estimates. “It’s a bluff.”

Waggoner said the corps inflated the costs to fund its operations and is trying to use the price to strong-arm the board into accepting the Comprehensive Levee Plan, a plan that will actually increase flooding in downtown Jackson.

When asked why the costs doubled in a matter of weeks, corps spokesman Kavanaugh Breazeale declined to answer.

At the center of the controversy is the Two Lakes plan, a $336 million proposal created by North Jackson businessman John McGowan. If implemented, the plan would be 99 percent effective in reducing flooding in Jackson and create millions, if not billions, of dollars in economic development opportunities for the metro area.

IN 2003, THE BOARD entered into a 50-50 cost-sharing agreement with the corps to study the project. The board brought on the Mississippi Engineering Group to provide in-kind services to the agency.

Despite spending six years and $2.8 million to study Two Lakes, Kamien recently admitted that the agency never reviewed it. The Vicksburg office instead created and studied the LeFleur Lakes proposal, a plan even the corps deemed economically infeasible to build.

A draft study, which was leaked to the press in 2007 and released to the public in 2009, stated that LeFleur Lakes would cost $1.4 billion and never generate enough revenue to justify its construction.

The corps, for two years, led the public to believe that the project studied was in fact Two Lakes, but once the study was released, supporters and detractors of McGowan’s proposal realized his concept was never given a fair shot.

Two Lakes includes the construction of two large lakes from the Ross Barnett Reservoir to south of I-20 near Richland. Among its amenities, it would create 120 miles of shoreline and a number of islands, many of which would be set aside for economic development.

Other portions of the property would be reserved for bird sanctuaries and natural habitats.

Levee board engineer Carl Ray Furr is unsure if the corps is willing to give the proposal an honest look. (Kamien stated that the agency has no intention of studying or approving any plan that would permanently inundate the area around the Pearl, unless the board would be willing to shell out millions of dollars more for studies.)

SOME SAY the corps’ insistence on implementing the roughly $300 million levee plan shows little regard for the quality of life of residents living in the capital city. Experts say the levees, like LeFleur Lakes, could never be paid for without raising taxes.

Nor would the levees prevent flooding downtown, said Dallas Quinn, a consultant with the Two Lakes Foundation. Instead, the levees would create a backflow of water into Town and Lynch creeks, flooding a span of territory 60 percent the size of Orleans Parish.

And in lieu of providing the area with a chance to enjoy lakefront views in both Hinds and Rankin, Quinn said the levees wouldn’t offer Northsiders much to soak in.

The current levee system that failed during the Easter Flood of 1979 would be increased in size by a third, making the earthworks three feet higher than I-55 and six feet higher than Lakeland Drive. Pesticides would be sprayed on the property to prevent anything from growing, and 100 yards of property on both sides of the levees would be condemned.

Retention gates would be installed to prevent flooding on the roadway.