Corps: Lake Plans a Waste of Time, Money

Adam Lynch

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Project Management Doug Kamien and District Commander Col. Michael Wehr

by Adam Lynch
September 28, 2009

Read the JFP's full Pearl River archive here.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers today made clear its favor for a levees-only plan for the control of flooding along the Pearl River between Hinds and Rankin counties. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Project Management Doug Kamien said the Corps would seriously consider only the levees plan because any further investment in a lake plan would run into the brick wall of environmental mitigation.

The Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District Levee Board sent out a resolution this year requesting further study on three flood-control plans. The Levee Board is considering two alternatives to a Corps-endorsed levees-only plan; both involve flooding the Pearl between Hinds and Rankin counties. One plan creates a 1,500-acre lake costing about $605 million, according to estimates, while a more ambitious lake plan, proposed by Jackson oilman John McGowan, consists of 4,133-acre lake containing 36 islands ranging in size from 1.6 acres to 40 acres, that he promises he could build for $336 million to $400 million.

Kamien emphasized that if the Levee Board decides to move forward with the Corps recommendation of expanding existing levees along the Pearl, they will begin an 18-month process that will cost the board $500,000. (The federal government will match that cost, for a $1 million total, although the board will have to present its $500,000 in cash.) The Corps predicts that total costs for the comprehensive levees plan would be $206 million, with about $133 million coming from the federal government.

However, the Levee Board could insist on pushing the Corps to analyze the ins and outs of a lake plan, although Kamien recommended against that option. The Corps, he said, will always endorse a levees-only plan over a lake plan, no matter how varied the size of the lake. He urged the Levee Board to pursue a levees-only plan to avoid needless investment in a lake plan that the Corps would only renounce at the end of a long, expensive investigation.

"We figure a study for a lake plan would take another four years, and (cost) $4 million total. At the end of those four years, we'd be back in the same place we are now, with the Corps recommending a levee plan, and the $1 million cost would still be in place to move forward with the levee plan," Kamien said.

Levee Board member Socrates Garrett, who endorses some version of a lake plan to promote development and raise property values inside the city of Jackson, said he was disappointed by the Corps' assessment. Garrett said he had expected the Corps to consider some combination of a lake and levee-plan.

"Economic development and flood control are really our desire," Garrett said. "One of those alternative (lake) plans shows significant cost reductions and flood protection and economic development. It's a really attractive proposition. At the very minimum, it seems we could get that plan looked at."

Kamien said the Corps is basing its decision almost exclusively on the environmental impacts of both lake plans.

"We're not disputing the flood reduction or the economic development," Kamien said. "We are saying that any impoundment you propose, plus or minus $300 million or $400 million in costs, has an alternative. In this case, the levee plan has less environmental impact. The federal government has very strict guidelines in how we're going to proceed, and we're going to base our decisions on what's in the federal government's interest."

"That's why we've got the bottom-line point of view," Kamien continued. "If you've got a plan that avoids those impacts, that's what we'll recommend. Plus or minus $300 or 400 million really doesn't matter in terms of environmental impacts."

Levee Board attorney Trudy Allen disputed the Corp's interpretation of the federal government's reliance upon environmental impact, arguing that new federal legislation passed in 2007 softened the government's stance on the plan's environmental impact.

Allen argued that the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 (initially vetoed by President Bush as lacking fiscal discipline, but overridden in both the House and Senate) exempted a local lake plan from some financing restraints by allowing local government and investors to help foot the development bill, so long as the plan was recognized as a "locally preferred" option. She said that law also exempted the project from some environmental restraints.

"(WRDA) doesn't say it needs to have the lowest environmental impact. It says it has to be environmentally acceptable. That's the will of Congress: environmentally acceptable, technically feasible, and provides at least the same level of flood reduction as the (levee plan). I'm not entirely certain how you come to the conclusion without actually laying everything out. ... We're missing an important element in this calculus if you don't go forward and consider the environmental acceptability of each of these plans the board is asking you to take," Allen said.

Kamien said, however, that all attempts to dam the river is still an act of damming of the river--what the Corps calls "impoundment"--and would require more environmental mitigation and expense than the levees-only plan.

"We've studied the impoundment from the reservoir down to I-20. An impoundment is an impoundment is an impoundment, and I think we're pretty accurate on the environmental impact. As I interpret the board resolution, they want the impoundment studied to the various degrees of variation, but it's still an impoundment, and that's how we come to that conclusion," Kamien said, adding that the Water Resources Development Act was never meant to undermine federal environmental laws.

In a conversation that rapidly deteriorated into a circle, Garrett asked the Corps if developers could mitigate the environmental impact of a lakes plan, to which Kamien replied: "It will all have to be mitigated, but the levee plan offered the least amount of necessary mitigation."

CORRECTION: The reporter originally mistyped the last word in the final quote in this story; the word has been changed in the text from "litigation" to "mitigation." We apologize for the error.

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