Attention ALL Delta hunters...

[tupe]

This is an item that we as the men and women who hunt the Mississippi Delta need to have our voice heard on. The Yazoo Backwater Pumping Project.
part of thei splan would include the dredging of the BIG SUNFLOWER and thereby damage hundereds of thousands of wetland throughout the delta.
Here is a link with an action letter. http://www.amrivers.org/mostendangered/bigsunflower2002.htm

Please lets put a stop to this outdated, unnecessary project once and for all.

M.B.

[Delta Duck]

I am for the dredging of the Big Sunflower river. It will not affect me one way or the other.
Those yahoos said the same thing about the coldwater river. All it did was keep 100's of peoples homes from flooding.

MBWaters,
What do you consider "WETLANDS"?
Do you consider the 800,000 acres under water this past winter as wetlands? There is still alot of land under water know in the delta.

[Po Monkey Lounger]

Most of the Corp dredging projects cost tons of taxpayer money and only benefit a few, primarily landowners/farmers. Flooding is naturally going to occur along rivers, and if you chose to live right on one, you need to either have your home elevated above the floodline on stilts or be prepared for occasional flooding. It would be much cheaper for the government to simply pay for flood damage, as it occurs, than to pay for these dredging projects that ultimately prevent flooding of low lying areas that provide winter duck habitat. By tinkering with nature and allowing rivers to hold more water due to added depth, and thus decreasing water in adjacent low lying areas, such Corp action not only destroys those "wetlands" you were asking about, but encourages clearing and farming of marginal cropland and residential development in these areas, which make the inevitable flooding that will still occur even worse when it does. Concerned citizens and sportsmen in Arkansas had the good sense to prevent the dredging of the Cache River years ago and perhaps saved one of the most important waterfowl wintering habitats int he MS Flyway. Dredging did not make sense then, and it does not now.

[dedux]

I and a lot of other Delta residents have already met face-to-face with the Corps, the Levee Board, and the DEQ. The Big Sunflower has not been cleaned out since back in the 60's, and the river siltation is backing the water out into our homes, instead of carrying the water downstream. This flooding is progressively getting worse each time we have the least bit of excessive rainfall.
Don't lecture me about moving or putting my house on stilts--I've lived here in the same location for nearly 60 years, so I know how this drainage is supposed to function, and my home is NOT built in a floodplain.
I've seen the figures, and believe the facts.
The Big Sunflower NEEDS cleaning!!!
I'm probably more of a conservationist than 95% of the folks on this board, due to the fact I love and nurture my farmland, and plan as much for waterfowl and wildlife, as I do farm crops. However, this river situation is threatening my, and a lot of other families existence.
It's real easy to sit back and say "let's save the snaildarters at any price", when you don't have a nickel in the dime. If there wasn't a solution to this problem, then that's one thing---let's all pack up and move to Canada. However, there IS a solution, and quite honestly, I'm willing to sacrifice my share of the snaildarters, to save my homestead, and I believe any sensible person would do the same thing!!!

[Wingman]

If you've ever flown over these drainages, you could see just how much cropland silts into the river, therefore worsening the problem. I say put it all back in trees..problem solved. Erosion from our farmlands is what is filling in the rivers; everyone should use filter strips along ditches to slow down this erosion. Conservation starts small.

Wingman
ISAIAH 40:31

[Po Monkey Lounger]

"Cleaning" is an interesting choice of words for dredging ---sounds like the Corps spin doctors at work.

Since I am a US taxpayer, I do have a "dime" in it ---I think it is a complete waste of money. Before I would be convinced otherwise, I would have to see the data re how often it really floods to the point homes are damaged, how much $ damage are we talking about, and how much the project is going to cost. Most of these Corps projects are simply a boondoggle for spending enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars to keep floodwater off of marginal cropland so farmers can plant it and then watch the crop inevitably die, apply for some type of government relief for the destroyed crop or file a crop insurance claim, costing even more taxpayer dollars and driving down the prices of the commodities due to oversupply.

Not familiar with the "snaildarter" and don't really care what happens to them. I am not a tree hugger, just a concerned citizen worried about waste of tax dollars and further depletion of wetlands and river bottoms. The Corps of engineers is notorious for coming up with projects to spend ever more money each year in the name of "flood control", just for the sake of protecting their turf, maintaining its funding levels, and ensuring its importance and existence.

IMO, enough is enough on these costly Corps projects of dubious value. For now, we will just have to agree to disagree.

[tupe]

Thanks for everyones interest. I was born and raised in the south delta. Some of my friends and family members worked for the COE, an dmy family farmed some 3000 acres above Ballground, so I am not some greener who doesn't know the fact of the area. I worked flood relief with the Red Cross, and have hunted and fished the backwaters of this area foe some twenty five years.
Back in the earlt ninties when teh phase of the project envolving the area around the Steel Bayou controll structure got underway I saw lakes seriously altered. But above an dbeyond that I saw the people of the area, the very people who the COE claims the project would help, vote against teh project and bring it to a hault because it then required matching funds from the local area and the locals did not want to pay for it.
It should have ended there. If the very people who the project is aimed at helping, wether it in fact will or not, do not want to see it go through then that should be the end of it.
Dredging and ditching the Sunflower will not stop flooding, it will only defrade the wetlands and force the water down stream faaster to flood someone else. I in no way believe that a project that was designed in the early 40's and has had little revision since can still be relevant today. So much of th hydrology of the delta has changes since then and the COE is still trying to play by outdated rules and ideas.
I wish no one any loss, but the fact is that it is just not logical for anyone to ask the rest of the tax payers to foot the bill for their choice to live in a flood plain that they know will damage thier home and lands on a regular basis. Welfare, and make no mistake that is what this is, of this sort were an individual is allowed to time and again get a check for doing nothing to prevent thier loss is rediculous.

M.B.

[Wingman]

Ballground, isn't that down there off of 3 around the paper mill?

Wingman
ISAIAH 40:31

[Lacuna]

Two of my leases are within the floodwaters of the sunflower. I have scouted the entire river during flood water and I know what it looks like from where it is still a ditch until it gets to DNF.

I have made this trek both sides many many times looking at ducks.

I always hate the flavor that surfaces when we are poised to do something like this. Lines get drawn and things get bitter and good solutions arent found in the wrath.

This is a long and deep story. Many of the areas that were cleared after the COE put in the large reservoirs along the hills should have never been cleared to begin with.

They are true wetlands and the farmers have to fight with them to farm them because they shouldnt be farming them anyway.

Now that leaves a land owner to be very offended that you are going to tell him what to do with his land and it's going to cost him money to do what you think is right.

And thats a fair damn gripe if you ask me.

Another obvious avenue to stop this problem is ALSO in the landowners hands but is expensive to deal with and the damn govt should help them with it.

Thats wash off and erosion that will get nothing but worse if they deepen the channel and cause this water to run further to settle. All of that soil that they think they need to move came out of the fields that the farmers cant stop from washing.
If you dont want to drege and alter the environments when you do it, then dont let it wash.
There are just as many people who want their land dry as there is want it wet for habitat.
Neither one should be required to suffer the others wishes without due compensation.

Also, dont build your house in a flood plain and then complain when the furniture is floating.

Dredged or not the sunflower will come out of it's banks. If it doesnt, it goes down the river and floods the people in the south.

Somebody is going to get it. Those flood waters are so immense in volume and cover so much ground, that you would to have to dig the sunflower 50 feet deep to contain it all.

I think the answer to this is to do this, and it's going to cost the taxpayers money but everyone gets what they want and they get it better than they would otherwise.

Except for in a few places that really DO need to be dredged, dont dredge the sunflower, thats stupid. Think about it.

You leave it alone and help the land owners stop the silt from filling it up.

In the process of doing that you construct control systems according to what the owners want. In either case the materials are the same, they just change what they do with the water. Either keep out, or let it in and hold it. You can keep the sunflower out of anything you want to.
We keep the Miss out of our hair dont we?

If you dig the sunflower, right behind it these places will loose topsoil faster, the washes will get bigger and the problem will get worse.

You have to stop the silt and you can help every farmer, and every land owner, and every habitat conservationist at the same time, using the same materials to do it.
You create control and most importantly CHOICE that stops the river from changing so dreastically with our imput.

Put a COLLAR ON IT!!!!!!!!!!!
The duck hunting would be AWESOME, and so would the farming, isn't that what we want?

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: Lacuna ]

[tupe]

Yep thats the place. My fathers farm was a few miles up HWY 3 it was known as TimberLaw farms. It is just north of where the levee hits 3. I am not sure who is farming it now but I know it has been developed for ducks.

M.B.

[Lacuna]

What is a pondberry by the way?

I have never heard of this. It's a rare shrub that grows along the river?

I hate to tell folks but we DO need that pumping station.

What we also need is to control the water entering the sunflower. I have ONE culvert on my place that I can close, and either stop a 1000 acre wetland from filling up to 10 feet deep in the middle of it, or I can hold that water after the sunflower has receded. I need the sunflower to pump it up.

What I do is let the water in, when it's high, and participate in my part of absorbing high water shock and using the water in my habitat plan. I have stuff for high water. Then when it receds I let it out to a certain point and then I stop it where I want it. This way I produce a flood buffer AND habitat.

Thats for a 1000 acre lake, that article was sorely under estimated for habitat damage.

All it took to contain that was one levee 12 feet high and one culvert. If you dont want the water and want to farm, then suface relay it over the top of the levee and farm away.

I have never seen one acre of land along the sunflower that couldnt be drained, the river is cut WAY too deep for that to be true anymore, ANYWHERE. You cant fix that making it deeper. And if there WAS any land still that marginal, you cant save it by dredging the sunflower anyway, it IS going to flood. If you cant get the water off of it to farm, then it's too marginal to farm, period.
What you have to do is dike it off and pump.

Farmers who want to farm marginal land need to accept the fact and expenses involved in doing their own surface pumping over the retention devices that keep the river out so they can farm. You cant dry the whole thing up so a few men dont have to pump, that is ridiculous. Wash out will get worse and a whole bunch of other problems. Buy them the pumps build them the dikes and say you are on your own.

[crow]

I understand the landowner/farmer wanting this project. But, in the last half of the 20th century, what percentage of COE projects really helped anything but the COE? They are a huge govt. beauracracy, and the first duty of any beauracracy is to perpetuate the beauracacy. I work in one bigger than the corps., so I know how that works.

One question about flooding of the lower Sunflower...How much does the drainage of the Sunflower really have to do with it rather than how much the Yazoo and MS Rivers can take from it? I don't care if the Sunflower is 75 ft. deep, if the upper MS has had big rains and the river is full, it won't take any more! What does dredging the Sunflower have to do with that? Seems to me, they are going to spend beaucoup dollars to fix a problem...sometimes, unless the big river is high!

[tunica du4u]

Something has to be done.If ya'll think it is flooding now JUST WAIT. If you aren't aware of it Tunica County passed a drainage "project" year before last and started it last year. EVERY ditch, creek, canal that is a part of our integral drainage system for the county is being cleaned, widened, dredged and deepened to improve drainage throughout the entire county. Where do you think this water is going? Better get a map and look. The 2 places are the Coldwater and the Sunflower Rivers. The Coldwater is on the East edge of the county but the majority drains south which utimately goes to Moon Lake and the Sunflower if I'm correct. Delta Duck is familiar with that end of the county as he lives and farms there and he will tell the same story. The water has to go somewhere! [img]images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[peewee]

Thats real smart for habitat conservation. Yeah lets just clean up every ditch. To hell with all the prothonatary warblers, rabbits, quail and all the other species which nest and thrive there. Lets clean up all the ditches and farm right up to the edge of them. Then lets get the Corps to come fix the mess so we can keep on doing it.

The corps has proposed a project to clean up deer creek and I believe dredge it since its silted in so bad. This is a creek my father and grandfathers grew up hunting on. Now if the corps comes in and supposively cleans it up and doesn't require a buffer zone of trees what will the corp be doing in another 30 years. They will be cleaning it up again. Wingman has it down pat. Instead of farming up to the edge of every creek, slough, and ditch there needs to be buffer zones. If that was to happen you would see alot more habitat for many species.

Thats my story and Im stick--in too it.

[tupe]

Lacuna,
Man you got me confussed! Are you for or against this project? Not trying to pick a fight it just isn't clear from your response what you think should happen.

M.B.