Barring any legal challenge, it appears the South Delta is finally getting its pumps.

The U.S Army Corps of Engineers announced last Friday it’s moving forward with an altered version of the Yazoo Pumps, a flood relief project that the agency has touted for decades. The project now also has the backing of the Environmental Protection Agency, whose veto killed a previous iteration in 2008 because of the pumps’ potential to harm 67,000 acres of valuable wetland habitat.

In a Jan. 8 letter, the EPA wrote that proposed mitigation components — such as cutting off the pumps at different points depending on the time of year, as well as maintaining certain water levels for aquatic species during low-flow periods — are “expected to reduce adverse effects to an acceptable level.”

South Delta residents have called for the project to be built for years, especially after the record-setting backwater flood in 2019. State lawmakers from the area rejoiced over last week’s news.

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Sen. Joseph Thomas, D-Yazoo City, explaining that most in his district support the pumps. “I’m sure there are some minuses and pluses (to the project), but by and large I think it needs to happen.”

Sen. Briggs Hopson, R-Vicksburg, recalled that almost half of his district was underwater in 2019.

“I’m very pleased that the Corps has issued this (decision),” Hopson told Mississippi Today on Tuesday.

Before the Corps’ latest proposal, the future of the pumps was in limbo for several years. Under President Trump’s first administration, the EPA in 2020 said the 2008 veto no longer applied to the proposal because of Corps research suggesting that the wetlands mainly relied on water during the winter months — a less critical period for the agriculture-dependent South Delta — to survive, and that using the pumps during the rest of the year would still allow the wetlands to exist.

The EPA then restored the veto under President Biden’s administration. But in 2023, the Corps agreed to work with the EPA on flood-control solutions which, as it turned out, still included the pumps.

While the public comment period is over and the project appears to be moving forward, the Corps has yet to provide a cost estimate for the pumps, which are likely to cost at least hundreds of millions of dollars. A 19,000 cubic-feet-per second, or cfs, pumping station in Louisiana cost roughly $1 billion to build over a decade ago, and the Corps is proposing a 25,000 cfs station for the South Delta.

Corps spokesperson Christi Kilroy told Mississippi Today that the project will move onto the engineering and design phase, during which the agency will come up with a price estimate. Mississippi Today asked multiple times if it’s unusual to wait until after the public has had a chance to comment to provide an estimate, but the agency did not respond.

Under the project’s new design, the pumps will turn on when backwater reaches the 90-foot elevation mark anytime during the designated “crop season” from March 25 to Oct. 15. During the rest of the year, the Corps will allow the backwater to reach 93 feet before pumping.

In last Friday’s decision, the Corps wrote that the project would have “less than significant effects (on wetlands) due to mitigation.” The project’s mitigation includes acquiring and reforesting 5,700 acres of “frequently flooded” farmland to compensate for wetland impacts.

In a statement sent to Mississippi Today, the EPA said that the “higher pumping elevations” — the Corps’ previous proposal started the pumps at 87 feet — and the “seasonal approach” to pumping will reduce the wetlands impact.

However conservationists, including a group of former EPA employees, are not convinced. The Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit of over 650 former EPA employees, wrote in August that the latest proposed pumping station “has the potential to drain the same or similar wetlands identified in the 2008 (veto) and potentially more.”

“Similar to concerns EPA identified in the 2008 (veto)… EPN’s concerns with the potential adverse impacts of this version of the project remain,” the group wrote.

A coalition of other groups — including Audubon Delta, Earthjustice, Healthy Gulf and Mississippi Sierra Club — remain opposed to the project, arguing that hundreds of species rely on the wetlands during the “crop season” for migration, breeding and rearing.

“This action is a massive stain on the Biden Administration’s environmental legacy and undermines EPA’s own authority to protect our nation’s most important waters,” the coalition said in a statement last Friday.

When asked about potential legal challenges to the Corps’ decision, Audubon Delta’s policy director Jill Mastrototaro told Mississippi Today via email: “This project clearly violates the veto as we’ve documented in our comments. We’re carefully reviewing the details of the announcement and all options are on the table.”

In addition to the pumps, the project includes voluntary buyouts for those whose properties flood below the 93-foot mark, which includes 152 homes.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jan. 22, 1906

Pioneer aviator and civil rights activist Willa Beatrice Brown was born in Glasgow, Kentucky. 

While working in Chicago, she learned how to fly and became the first Black female to earn a commercial pilot’s license. A journalist said that when she entered the newsroom, “she made such a stunning appearance that all the typewriters suddenly went silent. … She had a confident bearing and there was an undercurrent of determination in her husky voice as she announced, not asked, that she wanted to see me.” 

In 1939, she married her former flight instructor, Cornelius Coffey, and they co-founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first Black-owned private flight training academy in the U.S. 

She succeeded in convincing the U.S. Army Air Corps to let them train Black pilots. Hundreds of men and women trained under them, including nearly 200 future Tuskegee Airmen. 

In 1942, she became the first Black officer in the U.S. Civil Air Patrol. After World War II ended, she became the first Black woman to run for Congress. Although she lost, she remained politically active and worked in Chicago, teaching business and aeronautics. 

After she retired, she served on an advisory board to the Federal Aviation Administration. She died in 1992. A historical marker in her hometown now recognizes her as the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the U.S., and Women in Aviation International named her one of the 100 most influential women in aviation and space.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey takes a trip to Lazy Acres. In 1980, Lazy Acres Christmas tree farm was founded in Chunky, Mississippi by Raburn and Shirley May. Twenty-one years later, Michael and Cathy May purchased Lazy Acres. Today, the farm has grown into a multi seasonal business offering a Bunny Patch at Easter, Pumpkin Patch in the fall, Christmas trees and an spectacular Christmas light show.  It’s also a masterclass in family business entrepreneurship and agricultural tourism.

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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.