Federal bureaucrats got an earful this week from fed-up and flood-weary residents from the southern part of the Delta.
Their frustration is understandable.
They have been jerked around for decades, thinking relief from high water was on the way, only to have the spigot turned back on by those in Washington who listen more to the environmental zealots than they do to suffering farmers, businesspeople and homeowners.
Sen. Roger Wicker and Rep. Bennie Thompson organized a town hall meeting Wednesday so that the various federal agencies involved in flood control could hear from those regularly impacted by high water in an area that roughly runs from Vicksburg to Yazoo City.
Coincidentally, the event was held while another part of Mississippi — near Jackson — was dealing with flash flooding caused by heavy rains, with more high water expected from the rising Pearl River, another regular source of misery.
Back in Rolling Fork, though, the focus was not just on what has been happening recently but on some 80 years of broken promises.
When the flood-control plan for the Lower Mississippi River Valley was updated in the early 1940s, it had features that were supposed to ensure no part of the affected area got left out. The South Delta was promised a massive pumping station not to eliminate flooding in the region but to keep it to a livable level.
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have reneged on that promise ever since. The most recent was last year’s decision by the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency to undo the EPA’s decision of the Trump administration and flip back to vetoing the pumping station.
As a result, one mostly poor, thinly populated part of the country continues to pay the price for keeping others along the Mississippi River and its tributaries drier. The South Delta has become everyone else’s safety valve in times of high water, putting not only cropland in that part of Mississippi in danger but also homes and wildlife itself, and not just once in a while but most years.
It’s not surprising that the frustration of residents there bubbled up into some choice words.
The Mississippi Levee Board and other flood-control proponents have bent over backward to address the concerns of environmentalists about protecting wetlands. They’ve moved the location of the proposed pumping station and added tens of thousands of reforested acres. Their latest plan even called for putting more water in the Yazoo Backwater region when levels naturally drop in the fall, so as to improve conditions for wildlife. In sum, the net benefit for the environment would be greater with the pumps than without them.
Yes, they’ll be expensive, and the cost keeps rising with every year’s delay. The latest estimate is somewhere around $500 million.
But that rising price tag is not the fault of flood-control proponents. Those who have stood in the way of doing what’s fair are the ones who have driven up the cost.
