U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith recently received commitments from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials regarding prioritizing two important Mississippi flood control projects, the Arkabutla Lake dam and the Yazoo Backwater Area Pumps.
Hyde-Smith focused on the two Mississippi projects during a Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee hearing to review the FY2025 budget requests for the Army Corps and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
“For Mississippi and the nation, getting the Army Corps of Engineers budget right is important. The Corps is tasked with addressing some of our nation’s toughest challenges. We rely on the Corps to do its job, and to do it well—swiftly and effectively,” Hyde-Smith said.
Hyde-Smith used the hearing to confirm the Army Corps of Engineers, along with other federal agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, remain on track to advance the environmental impact reviews required to construct pumps and other flood control measures for the Yazoo Backwater Area of the Mississippi Delta.
“I am so grateful to everyone at the Corps who has been involved in addressing the floods affecting this Yazoo Backwater Area. A solution to this problem is long overdue. We’re talking decades here,” Hyde-Smith said. “Are we still on track, and don’t you agree that the people trying to live, raise families, put food on the table and do business in the Yazoo Backwater Area have a right to this federally-authorized flood protection? Would you agree that pumping stations are not a new concept?”
Connor said federal agencies “continue to work in alignment” and confirmed Hyde-Smith’s understanding that a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) could be released for public comment in the next “30 to 45 days,” and that a final EIS could be published this fall.
“The goal is to, by late fall in the calendar year, to have this process concluded,” Connor said. “We cannot replicate the 2019 situation.”
Following a disastrous flood that devastated the Yazoo Backwater Area in 2019, Hyde-Smith has been a driving force behind pushing the federal government to complete the pumping stations for the region as authorized under the Flood Control Act of 1941. The Yazoo Backwater pumps represent the last, unmet federal commitment to help protect a 630,000-acre region in the South Delta.
