County leaders pushed forward with a resolution that will continue the momentum to finish an uncompleted levee in the Rocky Bayou area of Yazoo County.
David Ivy, with the Mississippi Soil and Water Conservation Commission, recently appeared before the Yazoo County Board of Supervisors for their approval on the levee project, which will also come at no expense to the county.
Ivy said the levee is within the Rocky Bayou area.
“This is the backwater levee that was authorized in 1941 and was never finished,” Ivy said, holding up a map. “We have worked with the Natural Resources Conservation and have gotten a 100 percent construction grant to design and build this levee.”
Ivy added that the state of Mississippi will maintain the levee for now. But the maintenance will eventually head over to The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board.
“This is 100 percent federal funds,” Ivy said. “We are not asking for any money from anybody. We are just asking for authority to proceed on getting this work going. It is going to be a little while before construction starts, but there is going to be numerous things that will have to happen before we get to that point.”
John Phillips, a Yazoo County landowner, was also present at the board meeting, urging the board to consider the need for the levee’s completion.
“I don’t know if anybody on the board is aware of the need for the levee,” Phillips said. “Look at the destruction and the economic damage it is doing. This past spring, there was no flooding in the Mississippi Delta anywhere but right there in that area. There was a little over 60,000 acres underwater. You had to close two roads. The people who live out there must move because they can’t get back and forth. The people farming out there are going broke. I think Yazoo County deserves the same level of protection from flooding as the other counties in the state.”
The county board approved the resolution, thus moving the project ultimately forward.
