DuckSouth.com

If there is one guy that knows what he is talking about on this subject from this board, it is Po Monk. If Po Monk gets on board with fighting this, I feel sorry for the political types behind this.

Pro Bono? And I'm not talking Bigwater style.

Land glide is way out of date. It's a good tool but don't bet the farm on it.

I bet if you were getting a ticket, they wouldnt let you use landglide to get out of it

Well it's already answered the two questions I've been wanting an answer to, so it's served its purpose. Thanks Wingman.

Yes, many of the property owner names are old. I use it mainly to get a general idea of where the property line is.

You guys need to read the information on the deed of the land to the state. It clearly states that the water over the land is a public waterway. So Hosemann is trying to turn a public waterway into refuge thus effectively cutting off access to the north end of the lake. So overall it appears the public will lose access to almost 3/4 of the public lake with this deal. I emailed the DEQ head last night, Gary Rikard gary_rikard@deq.state.ms.us, and he called me about 10 minutes later. He was not informed of it turning into a refuge when Hosemann asked him to draw out the banks for the property. He was told it only for tax purposes and for a Nature Conservancy Project. Gary also only drew the lines for the property involved and not the rest of the lake. He said in hindsight it should have gone through the commission and a public hearing to let both the public and landowners state their opinions on the natural banks and the commission draw the lines. He said he felt that the MDWFP did not have the authority to make it a sanctuary and if they did not he would rescind his opinion on where the natural banks were. If the MDWFP cannot make it a sanctuary the land goes back to the original owners. So there was no public hearing for this project at all. I started going through campaign contributors for Hosemann last night but you have to look at a crap ton of individual PDFs to get everyone's name. I would be willing to bet these two landowners as well as some others on the north end of the lake were contributors but no proof yet and likely hard to prove as they can funnel it through other people easily. Conspiracy aside if the state is able to take private land as a gift and use it to close off this public waterway what is to stop them from using this precedent to effectively cut off access to many other public lakes to benefit private landowners, friends, campaign contributors, etc??? This is a dangerous precedent! Even if the whole project including the weirs opens up more public land than this takes away giving the government a precedent like this is powerful for them and dangerous for us the public. Honestly I'm concerned everyone isn't scared to death of what might be happening.

And props to the Gary Rikard! There are not many Executive Directors of state agencies that will take the time to actually call concerned citizens back. He restored a little faith in our public servants.

My question is how can one guy, Gary, "draw" the natural banks of the lake/river/stream etc.... whereever he wants? How can you just "redraw" the banks? Isn't that a geomorphic position? Alot of people don't know the difference between the old natural banks of a river/lake and the old natural channel of the river/lake. The bank is the bank is the bank...you can't just redraw the damn thing to your likeing....can you??