Selected
Article:
Delta
Council: Progressbeing registered in reducing flood
damages |
Special
to the DBJ
Greenwood
leader Tom Gary told the Delta Council Flood Control Committee
that tremendous progress continues toward reducing damages
caused by floods along the Yazoo-Tallahatchie-Coldwater
River system on the eastern side of the Delta, and that
local officials in the Greenville and Bolivar County area
report vast improvements since the Steele Bayou Channel
Enlargement Project has reached Highway 82 in Greenville.
“Those who have been skeptical of the levee boards
and Corps of Engineers‚ solution to flooding in the
Mississippi Delta are no longer questioning the performance
of these two projects, because the jury is in and flooding
is no longer the threat it once was in these two project
areas,” stated the Leflore County civic leader who
currently serves as Chairman of the Flood Control Committee
of Delta Council.
During the annual meeting of the Flood Control Committee
of Delta Council, reports from the Mississippi Levee Board
and the Corps of Engineers indicated that progress continues
on the eastern side of the Delta and channel enlargement
on the Tallahatchie River is proceeding north of Greenwood.
The most critical bottleneck to flooding on the east side
of the Delta occurs in the Quitman County and Marks area.
Officials reported that the river project will continue
to proceed toward them on the fastest pace possible. Flood
Control Committee members of the area-wide organization
from the Quitman County-Marks areas were assured that when
the project gets to them, it will bring the predicted level
of flood relief that they have been promised.
“All I can say to those who might have been non-believers
or are still waiting on their project to get to them, the
flood protection work that is being done in the Delta performs
exactly like we were told –it reduces flood stages
by 2-4 feet, depending on the type of rainfall event that
occurs in your area,” stated Mayor Paul Artman of
the City of Greenville, who had seen flooding damage his
community on an annual basis until the channel project brought
flood protection to Greenville. According to Flood Control
Committee Chairman Tom Gary, possibly the most threatening
and severe flooding challenges for the future lie in the
South Delta area where more than 4,000 square miles of Delta
communities, land, rivers, and streams gather to discharge
its rainfall through the SteeleBayou gates.
“Most of the rainfall that falls over the Mississippi
Levee District and a considerable portion of the rainfall
which falls over the Clarksdale Levee Board’s area
gets trapped behind the Steele Bayou gates during high water
on the Mississippi River, and therefore causes flooding
in the South Delta,” emphasized Gary.
We not only have a moral obligation to get our water off
of these people by building a pump down there, but now that
many of us have received the benefits from our flood control
projects, it is only right that Delta Council should call
upon the people of the entire region to make certain that
no area,–whether it is Marks or the South Delta,–is
left behind and without flood protection,” concluded
Gary.
The Delta Council committee passed resolutions in strong
support of completion of the Yazoo Backwater Pump Project,
insisting that lifting stagnant floodwaters from 4,000 square
miles of Delta land over the backwater levee and into the
Mississippi River is not only a good thing for human health
and the environment, but it is also the right thing to do.
DBJ
