Yazoo Pumps

Tuesday’s New York Times featured an editorial on the proposed Yazoo Pumps project. Considering the depth of issues related to coming election cycle, it is important to note that the Times devoted one of their three editorials to an environmental issue here in Mississippi.

What is proposed is a project detailed here by the Mississippi Sierra Club. The details are gory to say the least.

Although the Corps acknowledges that the Backwater Area continues to flood
regularly, the agency wants to drain over 126,000 acres of wetlands to intensify
agribusiness. Such intensification would increase pesticide use in the Delta,
where DDT and other pesticides already contaminate the land and water, and have
been linked to numerous health problems suffered by residents.

According to the Times our governor is attempting to use his political influence to secure approval of this project despite the protestations of the EPA.

Stephen Johnson, the embattled career scientist who runs the Environmental
Protection Agency, seems ready to defy Congress on an issue that his more
politically connected predecessors ducked. Mr. Johnson has all but decided to
cancel the Yazoo Pumps, a flood control scheme in the Mississippi Delta that is
potentially the most environmentally destructive project undertaken by the Army
Corps of Engineers at Congress’s request.

Haley Barbour, the Mississippi governor who once ran
the Republican National Committee, may well use his party connections to try to
persuade Mr. Johnson to back off. The administrator should resist this and all
other entreaties to do so.

The EPA has estimated that this project would be more devastating than the eleven other projects that have been denied for environmental reason combined. Dangerous chemical would be dredged up and put into the water supply, causing disease and birth defects..

Haley Barbour leads the fight for the environmentally destructive project of its type. You would hope he would be on the side of all Mississippians here, but as usual he sides with big business. Much like his support of Big Tobacco in the grocery tax issue, Haley sides with those who stand to profit, while leaving the rest of us to pay.