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Miss Piggy

Big Sunflower River "Maintenance" and Yazoo Pumps Project
$250 million

"This project makes no sense - economically, ecologically, environmentally, healthwise or logically." The Clarion-Ledger, November 1998.

The $62.5 million Big Sunflower River "Maintenance" project and the proposed $191 million Yazoo Backwater Pumps are designed to speed drainage of floodwaters in areas with low-lying agricultural land. These projects would deepen the Big Sunflower River in the lower Mississippi River basin to speed drainage, and then pump downstream floodwaters over the Yazoo Backwater Levee. The Yazoo Backwater Pumps - which would be the world's largest pump assembly - are part of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' (Corps) plan from another era to "replumb" the Mississippi River Delta through a series of water diversions and channels. Designed to subsidize marginal agriculture, which is counter to federal policy, both projects would be entirely federally funded.

Green Scissors Proposal
Deny any funds for the "maintenance" of the Big Sunflower River flood control project and terminate the proposed Yazoo Backwater Pumping Station, saving taxpayers more than $250 million, plus additional millions in averted annual operation and maintenance costs.

Conduct a new cost benefit analysis for the Big Sunflower dredging project that includes the cost of all future dredging activities on the River. It should accurately correlate to the purpose of the project and the project-flood design.

Current Status

The Corps plans to dredge virtually the entire width of the Big Sunflower River for a length of 104 miles. It would also "clean-out" an additional 28 miles of the Big Sunflower River, all under the guise of "maintenance." None of this area was dredged under the original dredging project (completed in the 1960's), which covered only 32 miles. New evidence indicates that dredging would re-suspend sediments highly contaminated with DDT and toxaphene.

In 2000, the Corps released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the Yazoo Pumps project, claiming major local benefits. However, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) independent analysis states that the Corps did not adequately or accurately assess the project's economic benefits. While the Corps' analysis estimates $168.6 million of agricultural crop benefits, the EPA's analysis finds the benefits to be only about $25 million.

After significant pressure, the Corps recently announced that it would prepare a supplemental EIS on the Big Sunflower dredging project to fully examine the potential impacts and risks of dredging the pesticide-laden sediments in the river. The Corps needs to fully investigate all elements associated with the project.

Project Hurts Taxpayers

In September 2000, the EPA concluded that the Corps used a flawed analysis of economic benefits for the Yazoo Pumps project. Furthermore, while the Corps claims the project is motivated by the need to protect homes and businesses in the Big Sunflower River area, the Corps' own analysis shows that structure protection accounts for only 15.6 percent of the project's benefits, while agricultural benefits account for 83.5 percent.

Federal taxpayers will pay for the entire construction and maintenance of the Big Sunflower and Yazoo Pumps projects. A provision advocated by Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Trent Lott (R-MS) in the 1996 Water Resources Development Act exempted local beneficiaries from paying any of the project costs associated with the Yazoo Pumps. The Corps' classification of the Big Sunflower project as "maintenance" also exempts it from local cost-sharing requirements.

Together, the Big Sunflower River and Yazoo Pumps projects could cost federal taxpayers more than $240 million to complete, and millions more to operate, all at 100 percent federal funding.

There are less expensive alternatives. Flood easements combined with reforestation, for example, would solve farmland flood problems and convert marginal farmland in the project area back to forests and wildlife habitat, while targeted flood-proofing could protect those few homes at risk.

The federal government is spending billions of dollars each year to take excess and environmentally sensitive cropland out of production. These projects would drain wetlands to promote more crop production in flood prone areas, setting up a cycle that would result in even more taxpayer funded bailouts of farmers in the area.

Project Hurts the Environment

The Yazoo Pumps project would drain more than 200,000 acres of wetlands and would encourage agricultural use of the land rather than promote its conservation. This single project undertaken by the Corps - the federal entity entrusted with protecting the nation's wetlands - would destroy seven times as many acres of wetlands as are destroyed under the Clean Water Act § 404 permit program across the nation during an entire year.

The re-suspension of DDT and toxaphene-contaminated sediment caused by dredging the Big Sunflower River would be a health risk to the subsistence, commercial and recreational anglers that fish the Big Sunflower and connected rivers. Dredging the River also would devastate the river's instream habitat, destroy at least 43 percent of the river's abundant mussel beds, and damage more than 3,600 acres of wetlands that are also in harm's way from the Pumps.

Both projects would promote farming on marginal lands (including farmed wetlands) and damage fish and wildlife habitat. Wetlands drained by the Yazoo Pumps will include 31,500 acres that the federal government has already paid more than $30 million to protect through the Wetlands Reserve and Conservation Reserve Programs, and tens of thousands of acres of forested wetlands on federal and state lands.

Contacts

• Melissa Samet, American Rivers, (415) 482-8150;
• David Conrad, National Wildlife Federation, (202) 797-6697;