[Cover Story] ‘Two Lakes’: The Answer?

by Jesse Yancy
April 7, 2004

John Conway, who lives in the house he grew up in just over a mile from the banks of the Pearl River, can remember swimming across his parents’ living room during the Easter Flood of 1979. “When the water receded,” he said, “it left fish and snakes in the house. The flood ushered Mississippi wildlife to our door. “But that was an extraordinary event,” he said. “These days, I consider the risk to be pretty low, I guess, though there were some houses in my neighborhood that were flooded last spring.”

Conway, now a young professional with a wife, a son and daughter, enjoys living in a city with a river. The entire family likes to fish and canoe. Conway, who remembers swimming in the Pearl since he was a boy of 12, kayaks there with his son on weekends. He loves having the river nearby, but he realizes that it also poses a threat. “The chance for flooding is very real,” Conway said. “Living where I do, the threat is always in the back of my mind.”

His and thousands of others.

But the way to keep the Great Flood of 1979 from happening again is unclear. While various forces have been addressing the issue since soon after that April catastrophe 25 years ago, federal, state and local governments have never backed a single flood-control plan. The latest, now called the LeFleur Lakes plan and earlier known as “Two Lakes,” is a controversial approach that has many business and political leaders on the bandwagon but has left many environmentalists, residents and some small-business interests wondering whether the plan is really the best option.

Uncle Ross and Aunt Pearl
Since the city’s founding, the Pearl River has frequently flooded in the Jackson area, but it has been especially noticeable since development has spread into the floodplain. Major floods are classified by their severity according to the frequency at which they are estimated to occur. The 1979 flood has been called a 100-year floodplain event. The 1983 flood was a 50-year event. And the 1991 flood was a 10-year event.

Area leaders were discussing the problems of both flood control and maintaining an adequate drinking water supply for Jackson as early as 1926. One of these leaders was State Sen. Mitchell Robinson, who succeeded in obtaining a flood control and navigability study from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The study proved unfavorable, but Robinson was persistent. Some dismissed his idea of a dam north of Jackson on the Pearl to provide water and recreation for the city as “Mitch’s ditch”; others warmed to the idea. By 1955, Jackson’s water consumption had increased to more than five times the 1935 rate, and pollution in the Pearl was a mounting problem. The labyrinth of legal, legislative and other obstacles that stood in the way of the construction of the Ross Barnett Reservoir was overcome, and it was built.

The reservoir never was really designed for flood control; it was constructed to create a water supply and to provide recreation for rich landowners around the reservoir. But that has meant problems for the river and for the city. “The Pearl River, as we know it, is gone. It is no longer a true river in Jackson,” said Malcolm White, local businessman and avid outdoorsman. “The Ross Barnett has done the biggest damage.”

The reservoir indeed presents special problems, according to Kenneth Griffin, general manager of the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District. He has said in the past that periodic flooding that occurs perhaps every 15 or 20 years is manageable, while events that happen every century or so are impossible to control. Griffin said he is pleased that another effort is under way. “Jackson needs a good flood-control plan, and I’m hoping something viable will come out of the current study,” he said.

Looking for a Panacea
But is that plan the LeFleur Lakes project?

Even in the case of reservoirs specifically designed to control flooding, some geologists, engineers and environmentalists discredit damming (“impounding”) a river for this purpose because reservoirs can have an extreme effect both upstream and downstream, changing flow levels, altering sediment movement and affecting other aspects of the river’s ecology.

The LeFleur Lakes project is such an impoundment proposal intended to solve the flooding problems in the Jackson area in a way that, according to the project’s materials, “the attractiveness and growth potential of the metropolitan area would also be enhanced.” The proposal states that flood levels would be permanently lowered in the area stretching from Jackson to Byram by providing a better flow course for the passage of water and by reducing the rate of flow in the river. It also envisions the creation of a new waterfront district for the Jackson Metropolitan area.

“I think that it’s about the only effective plan,” said Rankin County land developer David McNair. “John (McGowan) asked me to look at it before he went public with the plan, since I have been working with land along the river for over 20 years. I looked at it, and found no reason why it wouldn’t work well.

“The reservoir is not designed for flood control, and we still need something to give us peace of mind, and LeFleur Lakes will do that,” McNair continued. “The reservoir is not close to people who need it. When I look at LeFleur Lakes, I see kids that can bicycle there from their homes. I see public areas that can be used by people who need to use them. We need public parks for people who need places to go. You have to get in the car and drive to the reservoir. I see LeFleur Lakes as providing easier access for more people.”

Under the proposal, large amounts of sand from beneath the numerous railroad and highway structures south of downtown Jackson would be excavated in order to provide the proper flow course through this area of the river. The study proposal, developed in the late 1990s by John McGowan, a Jackson businessman and developer, maintains that existing levees and bridges presently block the river’s flow and back water up into Jackson homes and businesses. To accommodate the excavated material, the Flowood levee would be moved to the east, and the dredged material would then be put in the middle of the newly formed lake. This material would create a 600-acre island opposite downtown Jackson. North of Lakeland Drive, the dredged material would be placed on the east side of the newly formed “upper” lake.

Visitors could access the newly created land—an artificial island in the middle of the Pearl near where an extended High Street would stretch—by bridges and by interchanges of parkways and city streets over it and along the entire length of the 3,000-acre lake. The LeFleur Lakes proposal states that “many roads and bridges are needed at this time to alleviate the metropolitan area’s traffic congestion,” and that both the traffic and flooding problems can be solved simultaneously and at less cost than plans for previous flood control, roads and bridges.

The proposal also says that all the structures that flooded in the 1979 flood should be protected from another 100-year flood by the new lake and the improved reservoir discharge procedure.

The LeFleur Lakes plan would speed up the flow of the river by removing the trees from the very lowest level of the river floodplain (the river bottomland). This level would then be lowered another 5 feet with dredges and other earth-moving equipment, and then the entire 11-mile river course along the east side of Jackson would be made into a permanent lake. This lake would be necessary, says the plan, to prevent the redistribution of sand and silt and to prevent the regrowth of trees in the river flow course.

The LeFleur Lakes proposal also requires some changes to the way the Ross Barnett reservoir is managed, according to Griffin. For instance, under the proposal, levels in the Ross Barnett Reservoir, on two or three occasions each year, over a period of a day and a half, would fall one foot, then rise again to their original level. The Two Lakes Web site (http://www.twolake.com) states that once every 25 years people living near the reservoir would have to untie moorings and move boats because the water level would fall below 295 feet.

In addition, metal buildings at very low elevations would not be protected from another 100-year flood. According to the site, people who own land along the river south of Jackson would experience one or two river-bottom floods that they would not have had otherwise, but they would be compensated by the assurance that the new reservoir could reduce the elevation of every major flood in the area by one foot.

Chevy to the Levee
Supporters say direct funding is available for a local agency to undertake LeFleur Lake. In fact, the federal government has been looking at and funding options and studies since the early 1980s, including plans that have been proposed and approved by the Army Corps of Engineers, such as the Comprehensive Levee Plan.

Following a process begun in 1988 and paid for by pooling more than $3 million from the Pearl River Basin Development District and federal funds, the Corps of Engineers completed the Pearl River Feasibility Flood Control Study (a.k.a. the Comprehensive Levee Plan) in February 1996. The Corps recommended the construction of 21 miles of new levees at a cost of $122 million. The local sponsor would be required to provide $38 million for the acquisition of land, easements, rights-of-way, relocations and disposal areas. But legislation enabling the Pearl River Basin Development District to serve as the local sponsor for the Flood Control Project was defeated in the 1995 and 1996 sessions of the Mississippi Legislature.

The plan also included $30 million worth of recreation amenities and improvements, most of which would have been cost shared between the District and the federal government.

Even before then, in 1984, the Corps had proposed a dry dam that would catch heavy flows from extreme rainfall events in the upper basin, events similar to those that caused the '79 and '83 floods. Called the Shoccoe Dam, to be installed near Carthage, it was planned at a cost of $80.1 million ($24 million shared by the feds and the Pearl River Basin Development District). The Corps of Engineers identified that proposal as the most comprehensive flood control project for the Pearl Basin. But in October 1984, the Mississippi House of Representatives defeated a bill authorizing the District to serve as the local sponsor for Shoccoe.

Local opposition killed the funding measure, but to this day many people still consider Shoccoe to be the best plan for flood control in the middle reaches of the Pearl. Others note that the Comprehensive Levee System plan is still on the table.

“As far as we know, the Comprehensive Levee System (proposed by the Corps) is still viable, but we’ll have to evaluate it again,” said Gary Walker, project manager for the Corps of Engineers. “We will have to see if the levee alignment is still in place, and we’ll have to see if any development has gotten in the alignment, and we’ll have to adjust it.”

Walker said that the final result of the LeFleur Lakes plan might be a combination of lakes and the levee system. He said that the study would be marked by “milestones,” or points at which the decision would be made whether or not to proceed. “If we get to the point that something showed up as a show-stopper, we would have to evaluate with the Levee Board at that time whether we want to proceed with that plan or do something else,” he said.

Sponsorship is expensive, however, and the Corps is not currently considering other options—such as a less dramatic “greenway” proposal that is championed by some Jacksonians—because no one has stepped up to pay for a study. The LeFleur Lakes study is being conducted at a cost of $2.8 million; the federal government has recently decided to pay $3 for every $1 of money put up by the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District, also known locally as the Levee Board.

The Board of Supporters
Apart from the reservoir, flood control in the Jackson area is currently managed by 14 miles of levees built by the Corps of Engineers in the 1960s, protecting the fairgrounds on the Hinds County side of the river as well as land in Flowood, nearly all of Pearl and much of Richland. These levees serve as buffers for the floodwaters and also funnel the flood downstream. Personnel from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers make periodic inspections of maintenance, but the Levee Board does day-to-day management.

The Board is made up of the mayors of Richland, Pearl, Jackson and Flowood as well as the head of the Mississippi Development Authority, Leland Speed, in his role as representative of the Mississippi State Fair Commission. Robert Stockett Jr. represents Hinds County, and the chairman, Billy Orr, represents Rankin County. The boards of supervisors of Rankin and Hinds counties fund the board. The board is responsible for the maintenance of the levee system along the Pearl River in Hinds and Rankin counties.

The Corps and the Levee Board have agreed to initiate a three-year, $2.8 million feasibility study that will be limited to updating the cost of the 1996 levee plan and a complete analysis of the LeFleur Lakes Plan. “[The Levee Board doesn’t] have a set schedule for reviewing the progress of the analysis,” Orr said. “We have other things to do, but the Corps will be on it daily, and we’ll keep up with it very often. We do keep up to date on it, and it is our responsibility to make sure it goes right.”

Orr said that they follow the Corps’ recommendations in matters of maintaining the levees and that while some people might claim that they are more partial to one flood control plan over the other, “We will be partial to LeFleur Lakes only when it has been studied and it has been proven that it can do the job.”

The three county governments of Rankin, Hinds and Madison counties as well as the governing bodies of 11 cities in the three county areas decided to put the LeFleur Lakes plan in the hands of the Levee Board. Purportedly, they will expand the district and build some version of the project. The levees will be incorporated into the LeFleur Lakes strategy.

Walker of the Corps said the environmental impact draft for LeFleur Lakes is scheduled for October 2005. About six months after that, the Corps will finalize its recommendations.

“The recommendation will be a joint process between us and the sponsor,” Walker said. “It will be a plan we both can agree on; it will be a joint recommendation between us and the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District. We’re doing a full evaluation, and the study will determine how we assess the project. We’re not going to make any pre-determined notions. The study will speak for itself.”

It’s worth noting, however, that the Corps is tasked with developing an assessment of the feasibility of the Levee Board’s proposal, not recommending what the best possible option will be for the Pearl.

Neighborly Objections
The Pearl River Basin covers an area of about 7,800 square miles, comprising about 16 percent of the state as a whole. From Neshoba County, the river flows southwesterly, eventually forming the boundary between Louisiana and Mississippi in the southern part of the basin and discharging into the Gulf of Mexico just north of New Orleans.

After the Pearl leaves Jackson, it traverses more than 200 miles before reaching the Gulf, and the lands along the lower river have already—for decades—felt the impacts of impoundment and flood control in the Jackson area. Bank erosion, for one, has been a crucial and continual problem since the development of the state.

Andrew Whitehurst, a wildlife ecologist with the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, is the author of the newly published “Mississippi Streamside Handbook,” available as a free download from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks Web site. Whitehurst said rivers are able to carry a great amount of sediment. But when a stream goes into a reservoir, it slows down and the energy of the water is dissipated. Much of the suspended material it carries drops out, meaning the water that leaves the reservoir is sediment-starved.

“A normal river will gather a suspended load from its bed and from whatever flows in from its tributaries and through normal bank erosion and moving sand bars around,” Whitehurst said in a recent interview. “[The Pearl] is altered. The fact that the discharges can be abruptly stopped after a flood event makes the levels go up and down, so the banks become saturated during floods and when the water is quickly shut off and the level of the river channel drops. The banks can slough or heave.”

Whitehurst also says that the dams will affect four well-known diadromous (migratory salt-to-freshwater) species: the American eel, the Alabama shad, the Gulf sturgeon and the striped bass. These animals are restricted from habitat that they would reach to use for either spawning or feeding by impoundments, by dams.

The Gulf connection to the Pearl is a crucial factor when flood control anywhere along the river is under consideration, because the wetlands that lie near the mouth of the Pearl are important to the seafood industries along the central Gulf.

In a public hearing in Biloxi on March 11, coastal residents expressed concerns that LeFleur Lakes would damage the Coast, especially in terms of the area’s seafood industry. Gulf citizens were particularly worried that the project would reduce the amount of fresh water flowing into the Mississippi Sound, degrading its oyster beds and shrimp population.

Lauren Thompson, of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, said: “The reduced flow of nutrients and sediments down the Pearl can change the environmental conditions in the Mississippi Sound, affecting salinity and water quality.” Thompson says this could have a negative affect on populations of oysters, shrimp, blue crabs and finfish.

Since the Pearl empties into the Gulf just north of New Orleans, the state of Louisiana is also keeping an eye on flood control along the river, as it will affect their seafood industry as well as salinity levels in Lake Pontchartrain. Word is that this neighborly objection may well stop the project in its current incarnation.

LeFleur or Bust?
The Army Corps of Engineers is not considering an alternative to LeFleur Lakes and the comprehensive levee plans because, Walker said, the Corps cannot recommend anything without a sponsor. But “assuming we went through the process and found a feasible plan and a sponsor, yes, we could approve (an alternative),” he said.

Proponents of green space, including local business owners as well as conservationists, are proposing a greenway that will transform what is now a denuded floodplain into an area that will feature hiking, biking and jogging trails, parks with sports fields and playgrounds, a scenic river corridor for boating as well as wilderness areas.

Jackson geographer Dan Allen is among those who maintain that the greenway proposal has the potential to increase city revenue by attracting young professionals and entrepreneurs who look for such things as aesthetics and outdoor recreational activities when seeking to relocate.

“The Levee Board has denuded the area between the levees to improve the convenience of the flood waters out of the flood zone,” Hill said. “The Levee Board maintains the levees and the floodways such as the areas at Lakeland and I-20. They clear the floodways rather than do any aesthetic features and it’s ugly.”

“When you clear the trees away from the river, there are no roots to hold the banks,” Hill said. “The reason they clear the trees is that those trees and vegetation create a drag on the water going through, so what they do is straighten up and dredge the channel as it has been along I-55. That improves the passage of water. One of the things that the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks didn’t like was the clearings in the 1996 plan, which would have increased the number of clearings. It’s ugly; it looks like a moonscape going across I-20. And this creates a negative impression about Jackson.”

Critics say the LeFleur Lakes project is simply not progressive enough and does not address the changing demographics and mindset of the 21st century South, which includes younger professionals and families who might appreciate the ecological diversity—and recreational opportunities—of a less-developed Pearl.

“LeFleur’s Bluff State Park is our Central Park,” said Paul Crowson, a freelance computer consultant and an opponent of the Lefleur Lakes project, who calls the park “a gem in the crown of Jackson.” According to Crowson, more than half the park’s natural area would be destroyed, underwater or developed, which would be a net loss for residents.

In this context, the controversy surrounding LeFleur Lakes becomes a conflict of perception about the way Jackson should move, about the best approaches that the city can take in order to become a more vibrant community rather than a battle between tree cutters and tree huggers.

“People ask how long it will be before a flood-control plan will be put into place,” Orr said. “But we don’t know how long it will take. The study itself is going to take two and a half years. After that, it would be left up to funds that are available, and this project is big,” he said of LeFleur Lakes. “Now, it might not come to anything, because environmental concerns might knock it down or something else like public sentiment or lack of funding might come into play.”

“The only thing for sure is that Rankin and Hinds Counties need some flood control assistance somewhere,” Orr said. “I was head of the Fair Commission in 1979 during the Easter Flood, and we lost over $2.5 million, and that’s a lot of money.”

Supporters say the LeFleur Lakes idea is just a different approach from the levees, one that has the economic development and recreational components that levees don’t have. They also cite the support of local governments, state agencies and the congressional delegation. (John McGowan, the originator of the “Two Lakes” plan, declined to comment and deferred comments on the current state of the project to the Levee Board.) Detractors say that the levees are a strawman, and that there are more than two options that should be on the table for improving the Pearl.

Trash and Debris
The greenway proposal has its problems, including the fact that it isn’t designed primarily to control flooding. It also appeals more to those accustomed to outdoor recreation than to those acclimated to the hustle and bustle of a commercial environment, and it doesn’t have a sponsor to help bring it to the Army Corps of Engineers’ attention. With many development and business interests touting the grandiose LeFleur Lakes project as a silver bullet for metropolitan development, the less-ambitious (and less-destructive) greenway proposal pales by comparison.

But the environmental issues are crucial, and water quality is a primary concern. Jackson businessman Jerry Litton has said that trash and debris from the city would end up in the water of the proposed two lakes. Debris will collect on the edges, or collect on drifts that are out in the open or on the edges of the proposed island. Polluted runoff that is created when rain, irrigation and other water sources run over the land, picking up pollutants and transporting them to local water bodies, is also a concern.

Hill agrees. “The shallowness of the proposed reservoirs (LeFleur Lakes) is such that water temperature is going to heat up and that’s going to affect water quality,” he said. “Not only that, but when they impound the lake they’re going to flood one landfill that I know of, and there’s probably a second landfill. I found out when they tore down the old Baptist hospital, they put the asbestos from that in a fill that would be flooded.”

Sewer mains are another concern for the LeFleur Lakes project. Broken sewer mains would flow directly into the lake from the city. One such sewer is the West Main Intercept, which drains north Jackson and travels through the floodway. The construction of a lake in the floodplain opposite Jackson would put that sewer main underneath the lake itself.

The Corps is expected to address these and other issues in the upcoming environmental impact study, part of which was put into action during a “scoping meeting” held Feb. 23, during which interested parties brought their concerns to the attention of the Army Corps of Engineers to help define the parameters of the EIS, a process that’s being watched carefully by environmental and other interested parties.

Downtown Woes?
In addition to the potential flood and economic development benefits, some believe LeFleur Lakes can help solve Jackson’s downtown development woes. Granted, LeFleur Lakes appeals more to the outlying metropolitan area than it does to the city itself; on the surface, the project has much greater appeal for those sections of Ridgeland, Hinds and Rankin Counties between the spillway and Byram, but it has at least tentative supporters in the city itself, including Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr.

“The continuing flooding we experience nearly every year undeniably demonstrates that we very much need a comprehensive flood protection plan,” Johnson said in a statement faxed to the Jackson Free Press. “As a member of the Rankin-Hinds Levee Board, I work closely with mayors from Rankin County and other board members to address ongoing flood control measures.”

“The City of Jackson has gone on record as being in support of the LeFleur Lakes project, and we continue to work closely with federal, state and other local authorities to come up with the right answer to solve our problems with floods,” Johnson added.

But, said Matthew Dalbey, assistant professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Jackson State University: “From a physical planning point or perspective, when you have an interstate between a new development project and downtown, I don’t see how that is going to help downtown. As a matter of fact, I think it’s going to make downtown dead. It’s just too big of a separation; it’s just like any other type of leap-frog development or urban sprawl.”

“The people who argue for this will say that any new development within the boundaries of the city will provide a positive economic impact. That's probably true,” Dalbey said. “But the issue remains that the new development will be separate from the old development. It will kill downtown because of the separation.”

John Lawrence, president of Downtown Jackson Partners, likes that Lefleur Lakes could place more residents and recreational options closer to downtown, but he is concerned about the environmental impact. “Stillwater on a larger scale is a far more preferable waterfront to a larger audience. That is a plus, but right now from an ecological standpoint we need to make sure those issues are addressed … and that it solves flood control which is our number one issue,” he said.

Of course, whether LeFleur Lakes, or any such new development district, will improve the local economy is an unknown. It also isn’t completely clear what the cost of the project will be and how much of that will need to be handled by municipalities, developers or public-private partnerships. Some people say that the city has extended itself already and that further development is superfluous; after all, the state economy is drawing back, consolidating itself and trimming edges, so it makes sense that the capital city should follow suit.

Malcolm White believes LeFleur Lakes can improve both the tax base and quality of life in Jackson—if the environmental homework is done first. “I’m for it because it would revolutionize Jackson,” he said of the project. But, he said, Jacksonians have the right to know the environmental downside, and what will be done to mitigate the problems. “I’d hire two environmental teams and let them loose.”

White realizes such an environmental impact study could help scuttle a project he really wants to see happen. But, he added, “If nothing else comes out of this project but greenways, it’s good for us.”

CORRECTION APPENDED April 8, 2004

 
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