Plans for the Yazoo Backwater Pump Project are being evaluated by the Army Corps of Engineers after months of damage assessment. Experts say around $800,000,000 worth of crops were lost in the 2019 floods, but the full economic impact may never be realized. Greg Michel, Director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, says 548,000 acres were flooded in the delta last year, around 200,000 of which were farmland. He says if the pumps had been installed to drain the remaining land, thousands of acres would have been spared. "So the question would be 'well why 200,000?' Because the environmental issues would be addressed with that, and 200,000 acres would flood anyways to keep the wetlands there," says Michel. "So the bottom line is potentially 300,000 acres could be spared at that time and in the future should this project come to be."
The pump project has been proposed for years and would create a system of levees, drains, and pumps to mitigate flooding in the delta. But, environmental advocates say it would drain the area's wetlands, destroy the homes of thousands of wildlife, and believe adding these pumps would mostly benefit large farms. The project was later vetoed by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2008 but was resurrected because of last year's floods. Governor Tate Reeves says this new report shows the human impact of the flooding, with the loss of farms and more than 600 homes. "There was an awful lot of people across the economic spectrum and the vast majority of those who were affected were individuals that were certainly in an impoverished area and in many instances struggled. And when small businesses are failing, it becomes a huge hardship for so many people," says Reeves.
Officials say they are optimistic that the EPA will be more receptive to the plan following this report.
