DuckSouth.com

According to an article in the Northeast Daily Journal on 5/1/2002, The Army Corps of Engineers will halt work on about 150 water projects because of questions about how the agency determined the need for them. The list of congressionally approved flood control, river navigation, and other water projects to be halted is to be released in the coming days. Hopefully, it will include the Sunflower River Project and all projects on the Tallahatchie, Yalabousha, and Yazoo.

The agency's director said that the action is "part of a more comprehensive initiative to ensure that corps projects are a sound investment for our nation and are proposed in an environmentally sustainableway." Hmmm.
Looks like the voices of reason and concern have been heard. Nothing at all wrong with applying a little cost/benfit analysis to these projects, many of which seem to be "busy work" of dubious value, and likely harmful to the environment and habitat.

Some cost estimates for the Sunflower River project that were included inan editorial by Bill Minor in his column appearing in the NE MS Daily Journal on 10/5/2000, were $181 million for the pumping plant and $62 million for the dredging. Folks, that is a lot of taxpayer dollars to protect some river bottoms from flooding from time to time. It would have to be cheaper to just pay
for the flood damage as it occurs, or to pay farmers/landowners to restore the bottoms via WRP program or other such program.

IMO, this is good news. It is long past time to stop giving the Corps a blank check to do whatever they like, often for reasons other than necessity.

Ole Bufflehead I saw that article or one similar this past week also. I was glad to see it to be honest with ya.

If you were going to spend 243 million dollars, it sure would be nice to use it to buy up all of that marginal land that has flooding problems and turn it into public hunting!!! Offer landowners around 1000 per acre for the best land and a lower price for less valuable land and you could have somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-250 thousand acres of the finest public hunting in the world. The federal governtment has caused the majority of the flooding problems through its policy concerning the clearing of land, drainage, and artificial support of farm incomes. If all of the swamps, sloughs and bayous that have been drained, cleared and farmed were still in the shape that nature made them, there would not be the need for dredging. although dredging solves some of the problem some of the time, when bad years come, it causes more problems that it will solve. use the money to buy back the land at issue.

I am about to take a three hour exam and the cost benefit analysis of the yazoo pump project. believe me, its a money pit.