One Lake Instead of Two?

Thomas Beck

Levee Board President Billy Orr is asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to put more emphasis on the Lower Lake plan in upcoming weeks.

by Adam Lynch
March 17, 2010

Also see: Pearl River Archive

The Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District Levee Board is pressing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take seriously a lake plan to coincide with a Corps-preferred levee expansion the board approved in December.

Levee Board President Billy Orr submitted a March 8 letter to the Corps pointing out that the Corps' intent, so far, does not address the Levee Board's desire for a smaller lake to be built between the expanded levees the board approved last year.

The board also explained in its March 8 letter that it wants the Corps to incorporate into the levee plan "access to the river, recreational features and development of tributaries, in particular, Town Creek."

The Levee Board opted for the Corps-endorsed levees-only plan over a billion-dollar Two Lakes plan, pushed by Jackson oilman John McGowan. The rejected plan would have affected 7,857 acres of wetland and hardwood forest. The board added a stipulation to its December agreement, however: that the Corps consider allowing a smaller 1,500-acre lake between the levees at a later date and to design modifications that would better accommodate a levee-girded lake.

Thus far, the Corps has refused to accommodate any suggestion of an impoundment. Corps Chief of Project Management Doug Kamien argued to the Levee Board last September that the Environmental Protection Agency's Executive Order 119900, created in 1977, directs federal agencies like the Corps to avoid direct or indirectly supporting any new construction that will destroy or modify wetlands like those along the Pearl River between Hinds and Rankin counties.

Corps spokesman Frank Worley says the Corps had not updated its opinion against any impoundment of the Pearl River since September. "As far as we know, Kamien's statement from last September still stands," Worley said.

But Orr's letter adds that the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 legally permits such an impoundment. Board attorney Trudy Allen pressed that assessment last year, arguing before the Corps at the September meeting that the act exempted a local lake plan from some environmental regulations.

"(WRDA) doesn't say it needs to have the lowest environmental impact," Allen said. "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)."

Levee Board member and Two Lakes supporter Socrates Garrett said the Corps' final position on a lake plan is still unclear, but he added that the board would have to press its desire if any lake plan were to be a reality.

"The Levee Board is prepared to do that, but we always hope that the spirit of cooperation will prevail, and we can negotiate our way through this. We certainly don't want an adversary in this," Garrett said.

At last week's meeting, Mississippi Engineering Group Inc. acted upon a 2006 request by the LeFleur Lakes Development Foundation and submitted to the Levee Board a 28-page draft of its economic- impact report on a smaller Lower Lake Plan.

The Levee Board formed the LeFleur Lakes Development Foundation in 2005 to investigate the feasibility of McGowan's Two Lakes plan—then called LeFleur Lakes. But the report reveals that the group embraced the more modest ideas of renowned new urbanism architect Andres Duany, who dismissed the McGowan plan at a 2007 charrette because of its cost—and the unlikelihood of the plan surviving many environmental suits, saying it couldn't happen in his lifetime.

The smaller lower lake plan does not carry the significant cost and environmental impact of the McGowan plan, but the lake would still face environmental opposition, since its design calls for the inundation of a large portion of LeFleur's Bluff Park, including the Mayes Lake campgrounds.

However, Mississippi Engineers Inc. claims the lake will successfully complement a supplemental project championed by Jackson developers and Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. to impound Town Creek, creating a waterfront pedestrian promenade with plazas, parks, shops and restaurants. The report projects a new corridor, extending from the Convention Center Complex along East Pascagoula Street, similar to mixed-use amenities and regional attractions of San Antonio's Riverwalk.

The report anticipates the construction of the lower lake plan to cost $605 million, including $50 million for land acquisition, financed by a district expansion and subsequent property tax increases in the area.

The report expects taxpayers to pay $13.8 million annually for debt service on a 30-year, $200 million bond issue at 5.5 percent interest. However, the federal cost-share payment stops at $133 million, so the district must finance a total of $472 million, much of which taxpayers would fund.

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