Now that Officials at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers aren’t getting their way, they want to take their toys and go home.

Good riddance. Time for Mississippi to cut that umbilical and go its own way on flood control. It’s not like we’ll be losing anything. The corps has accomplished absolutely nothing in Jackson over the last 30 years. Look what a great job they did in New Orleans!

Mississippi’s flood control rebellion, led by entrepreneur extraordinaire John McGowan, has got corps officials foaming at the mouth in apoplexy. How dare we!

Here’s our response: How dare you! How dare the corps try to kill a superior flood control plan that would double the tax base of Jackson in one generation. The fate of our city - indeed the state - hinges on the Two Lakes plan.

The Two Lakes plan would make available 8,000 prime urban acres for development in the heart of our metropolitan area. It would make Jackson a lakefront paradise, the envy of the South.

But the corps doesn’t give a rat’s tail about all of that. They have been embarrassed by John McGowan who has exposed their incompetence every step along the way. It’s payback time!

Now the corps is threatening to “decertify” the existing levees, potentially raising home insurance costs. It’s a brazen attempt to extort the Pearl River Levee Board to bend to the corps’ will.

Here’s the joke: The levees haven’t been certifiable since 1979 when they failed miserably. The levees didn’t work. They were too close together, causing the water to back up and flood downtown and northeast Jackson. Since then, nothing has changed, but the corps has the legal right to “certify” the failed levees on the basis that a new plan was “under study.”

And boy did they study, and study and study, making several engineering firms quite successful during the 30-year process.

Rather than move forward on the Two Lakes plan, the corps now wants to - you guessed it - study levees some more.

Let’s face facts folks. If the corps hasn’t done anything in 30 years, what makes you think they will do something now?

The decertification bluff is just the latest in a series of heavy-handed corps tactics. They have kept their reports ‘top secret’ and consistently distorted both flood control calculations and cost estimates. In their latest levee plan, they estimated $270 million in engineering fees alone! That’s about the price tag for the entire Two Lakes project.

Levees won’t work. They didn’t in 1979. They won’t now. The levees will simply back the water up. In contrast, the Two Lakes plan relies less on levees and more on improved flow to get the water out in a controlled manner before it floods.

This is what our founding fathers feared - an unaccountable federal agency running roughshod over a local government. A recent Clarion-Ledger poll showed 85 percent of us are against the corps’ levee-only plan.

How can corps official Doug Kamien have the power to stop the most important economic development project in the history of our state and doom Jacksonians to never-ending fear of flooding in the process?

You can thank Jimmy Carter, who turned the corps into an environmental agency by executive order. The corps - by law - cannot promote any project that reduces wetlands or increases economic development. That’s what people fail to understand. The corps has admitted that Two Lakes will work, but they are legally forbidden to support it.

One might ask why the corps even exists today given its legal restrictions. Good question. Let’s just say bureaucracies have a way of looking after their own interests.

Congress recognized this problem and passed a new law giving local flood control agencies the power to propose a ‘locally preferred’ plan. The corps cannot stop Two Lakes if the Levee Board has the guts to go their own way. If the Levee Board supports Two Lakes, then it can be built with $133 in already appropriated federal money, savings from lower insurance costs, tax increment financing and landowner leasebacks. In contrast, the corps’ levee plan would raise local taxes by $162 million. Ouch!

Two Lakes would cost $336 million. Congress has already authorized $133 million for a locally preferred plan. Another $50 million can come from bonded flood insurance savings. Another $50 million can come from tax increment financing. That leaves about $100 million needed to be raised through leasebacks to existing landowners. Given that their land would go from swampland to prime lakefront property worth several billion, the $100 million leaseback figure is a layup.

This is McGowan’s sweet spot. McGowan is a world-class hydrologist who has the bank account to prove it, but there is another key to his success. McGowan Working Partners has proven an uncanny ability to navigate the incredibly complex federal bureaucracy mazes. They wore down the EPA when the oil majors wouldn’t even try. That’s what put these dozen or so smart, laid back engineers in blue jeans on the map. They are doing the same to the corps.

This is a David versus Goliath story with nothing less than the future of our state hanging in balance. So goes Jackson, so goes Mississippi. Jackson is the unchallenged governmental and economic capital of our state.

If the Pearl River Levee Board is too timid, too co-opted or too parochial to make Two Lakes happen, then Haley Barbour needs to appoint a new Two Lakes commission to get ’er done.