Pascagoula River Named As One of Nations Most Endangered

The Pascagoula River has made the list as one of America’s top ten most endangered rivers. MPB’s Phoebe Judge on why.

The eighty mile long Pascagoula River, which weaves its way through lakes and marshes before emptying into the Gulf of Mexico, is one of the last large free flowing rivers in the United States. The report, released by American Rivers included the Pascagoula primarily because of the Department of Energy’s plan to hollow out salt domes in Richton in order to enhance the nation’s strategic petroleum reserves. Raleigh Hoke is with the Gulf Restoration Network,

"And the reason this is going to do a lot of harm to the river, is because to hollow out the salt domes they are going to take 50 million gallons a day out of the Pascagoula river everyday for five years. Then take that water and wash it through the domes and then take that hyper salty and pump it out off the coast of Horn Island creating potentially a very large dead zone in the Mississippi sound as well."

This plan has a number of environmental and conservation groups upset, but proponents of the plan say it will create hundreds of jobs for south Mississippi while providing a necessary service by ramping up the nation’s oil reserves. State senator Tom King represents portions of Richton,

"I support it wholeheartedly it’s certainly is a great project. Perry County has a high percentage of employment of course and that’s widely because of the economic impact on not only our state, but our whole country. So it’s badly needed and it will not only help Perry County and the city of Richton but it will help the entire state."

The Department of Energy is expected to release a new study looking at the impacts of the water removal from the Pascagoula River sometime this spring.