JACKSON, Miss.—On the afternoon of July 10, 2024, Deon Thompson stood before a microphone at the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Auditorium in Jackson and repeated a message he had delivered many times before.
“We don’t want our neighborhoods flooding the way that they’ve been flooded,” said Thompson, a resident of northeast Jackson who was forced to evacuate his home in 2020 when the nearby Pearl River crested at near-record levels. “We want our properties and our neighborhoods protected.”
Like others at the auditorium, Thompson was providing feedback on a new flood-mitigation plan from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would create an artificial lake along the Pearl River. The plan, developed in tandem with the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District (known locally as the Levee Board), is the latest version of a controversial and long-morphing project to address persistent, destructive flooding in Jackson while creating recreation and development opportunities around a new lake.
The updated plan is one of several flood-mitigation strategies detailed in the Corps’ Draft Environmental Impact Statement, or DEIS, which weighs the benefits and feasibility of each project using internal modeling and projections. This assessment process is vital to the future of flood control in Jackson since the Corps must decide that a plan is economically and environmentally sound before federal funds can be used to implement it. In 2022, Congress earmarked $221 million for a Pearl River flood-management project in Jackson.
Alternative proposals in the DEIS include the Levee Board’s former “One Lake” plan—which it had previously designated as its “locally preferred option” to reduce Jackson-area flooding—and a “non-structural” solution involving elevating homes and buyouts of properties in flood-prone areas. The DEIS, released June 7, effectively rejected the earlier One Lake plan, citing its estimated cost of up to $2 billion and potential for inducing flooding in some areas rather than suppressing it, among other factors.
The Levee Board now supports the Corps’ updated lake proposal, and the agency has tapped the project as its likely choice for flood management in Jackson.
To Thompson and others present at the July 10 public meeting, however, the Corps’ new lake possibility does not pass muster because it puts the safety and economic interests of some people ahead of others.
“We need you to give us a plan that’s going to include everyone,” Thompson told Corps and Levee Board representatives at the auditorium. “(Right now) we’re just sitting ducks waiting for the next flood to happen.”
Many Proposals Later, How We Got Here
The latest lake proposal from the Corps is the legacy of former oilman John McGowan’s “Two Lakes” scheme, which sought to rein in flooding along the Pearl River by creating separate lakes spanning 4,900 acres. That plan, which McGowan introduced in 1996 and promoted through his aptly named “Two Lakes” foundation, was scaled down to a single lake 13 years ago due to pushback over costs and environmental damage.
McGowan’s Two Lakes Foundation became the Pearl River Vision Foundation to better align with the new “One Lake” project, and the Levee Board designated the plan as its locally preferred option in 2012. McGowan died in November 2023, but family members and business partners still support the lake development plan.
Since 2012, no version of One Lake has cleared the necessary hurdles to become Jackson’s consensus flood-control solution. While the Levee Board has repeatedly tweaked the plan to boost its chances of approval, local opposition and objections raised in public comments have dragged out the federal review process and delayed a final decision on the project.
Transparency concerns and reported conflicts of interest have also dogged One Lake’s planning and review process. In 2010, a Jackson Free Press investigation found that Levee Board appointees, McGowan family members and members of McGowan Working Partners owned multiple parcels of land that would have become lucrative waterfront property under the former “Two Lakes” scheme. The landowners had failed to publicly disclose these assets while advocating for the project.
Eight years later, a coalition of local and national organizations blasted the Levee Board for limiting external review of its One Lake proposal and restricting opportunities for public comment and debate. The groups sent a letter to the Corps with a long list of grievances, including “poorly noticed and organized public meetings … designed to suppress public input” and a lack of Q&A sessions at those gatherings. Instead, Levee Board members insisted that participants submit comments in writing and limit verbal feedback to one-on-one conversations.
“The (Levee Board) has been delinquent in promoting purposeful public participation in the decision-making process,” the organizations stated in the letter.
Public feedback opportunities on One Lake have increased since the Corps assumed a greater role in the project’s planning and development. During July’s public meetings in Jackson and municipalities downstream of the capital city, the agency invited questions and comments on its new lake plan and other flood-control proposals in the DEIS.
Enter Alternative D: Same But Different
In devising its updated lake plan released in June, the Corps sought to follow the same blueprint as the Levee Board’s previous One Lake scheme while reducing its financial and environmental toll. Referred to as “Alternative D” in the DEIS, the plan would scale back excavation of the Pearl River’s channel, sparing more habitats along its banks while allowing more water to travel downstream at lower flood heights.
It would also move a weir—a type of dam that allows water to flow over it—proposed in the prior One Lake plan to a more strategic location upstream, distancing it from a landfill site and lowering the risk of unearthing toxic waste during construction. The addition of the weir and the channel expansion would create a roughly 1,700-acre lake stretching between Hinds and Rankin counties.
As an added flood-prevention measure not included in the rejected One Lake plan, Alternative D calls for building a new levee alongside Jackson’s Canton Club neighborhood—an area that has experienced repeated flooding from the Pearl and its tributaries—and adding a second levee around a wastewater treatment plant downstream.
Environmental groups say these changes fail to meaningfully distinguish the Corps’ plan from its predecessor.
“Alternative D has the same problems as the ‘One Lake’ plan,” Abby Braman, executive director of Pearl Riverkeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Pearl River and its surrounding watershed, told Corps and Levee Board representatives on July 10. “It’s prohibitively expensive and will require millions of dollars in environmental mitigation costs to compensate for habitat loss.”
The Corps expects Alternative D to cost between $487 million and $655 million, a far cry from the $1.5 billion to $2 billion range it projected for the older One Lake proposal (but up to three times the sum Congress allocated for the project). The plan would reduce annual flood damage by $27.7 million, the agency estimates, extending some protection to 773 structures in the project’s area in the event of a 100-year flood (a term used to describe a flood height with a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in a given year).
Despite the Corps’ adjustments, however, the DEIS anticipates Alternative D to provide roughly the same level of flood protection as the rejected One Lake scheme. That means some properties in the project’s footprint—notably in majority-Black, historically underserved areas of Jackson—would remain exposed.
“Alternative D seeks to realize flood risk management through a reduced scope of measures that provide similar levels of flood risk reduction as (One Lake),” the report states.
The lack of significant improvements to flood control in Alternative D has made some residents question whether the Corps considered non-lake proposals for flood management in good faith.
“Rather than an unbiased scientific assessment, the (DEIS) reads like a justification for a predetermined conclusion,” Scott Crawford, a longtime Jackson resident, said at the July 10 public meeting. “There are better alternatives than a lake plan.”
New Plan May Induce New Flooding
Just as with One Lake, the Corps’ new lake plan has the potential to induce flooding in some parts of Jackson. The DEIS states that Alternative D could cause further inundation to more than four dozen structures in areas of “environmental-justice concern”—a designation the Corps applies to neighborhoods and communities disproportionately affected by environmental hazards.
Properties that could see increased flooding under Alternative D are concentrated in South Jackson near the Pearl River’s Caney Creek tributary.
“Direct, adverse impacts from construction of (Alternative D) include potential induced flooding from the 100-year storm event to approximately 52 structures in the study area,” the DEIS states.
The Corps has proposed a “non-structural” path for homeowners at greater flood risk under Alternative D, making them eligible for home elevations covered in part by federal funding. Elevated homes would be raised high enough to withstand up to a 100-year flood event, and the government would acquire properties deemed unsuitable for elevation. Homeowners could also choose to forgo elevation and get bought out instead.
While the Corps has presented this non-structural option as a boon for vulnerable properties, critics see it as evidence of the plan’s fundamental flaws.
“The flooding caused by Alternative D is so egregious that the Corps is offering the owners of some structures in South Jackson … compensation in the form of elevations, flood proofing and voluntary buyouts,” Braman said on July 10.
The Corps and Levee Board would pay for home elevations under Alternative D, but homeowners would be responsible for a range of related costs. These include hotel bills and other temporary living expenses incurred during the construction process, as well as any structural repairs required to safely raise a home.
Using standard federal estimating tools, the Corps projects out-of-pocket expenses tied to home elevation to be as high as $6,500 per month—nearly double the average monthly income of Hinds County residents, 2022 data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show.
Though it offers comparable flood relief to the rejected One Lake plan and risks inundating some properties, Alternative D is the current frontrunner among the proposals assessed in the DEIS. The Corps has designated the project as the likely “National Economic Development” plan, indicating that its flood-control features—coupled with its potential for profitable lakefront development—offset its costs and environmental burden.
“We are looking for a project that is going to provide the most net benefits,” Brandon Davis, the Corps’ environmental planning chief, said at the July 10 public meeting in Jackson.
Many residents, for their part, have called on the Corps to go back to the drawing board, making clear that they vehemently oppose proposals that would put any local properties at greater flood risk.
“We’re all in this together,” Sharon Paige, a resident of northeast Jackson, said on July 10. “And a solution that helps some, but not all, is unacceptable.”
No More Promises to Reduce Creek Flooding
Alternative D has drawn criticism for its omissions as well as its core components. During July’s public meetings in Jackson, participants blasted the plan’s lack of solutions for flash flooding along the Pearl River’s tributaries, which flow through some of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. In recent years, flooding from creeks and other adjoining waterways has forced large-scale evacuations and cost homeowners millions in property damage.
One Lake’s backers had previously pledged that earlier versions of the project would help alleviate tributary flooding, extending protections to structures near Eubanks, Lynch and Purple Creeks in Jackson. The Corps makes no such promises in its amended lake plan, noting that tributary maintenance and flood protection would be left to other authorities moving forward.
“This feature was removed from further consideration in (Alternative D) upon identifying that this work is being undertaken by the (Natural Resource Conservation Service), state and other local entities,” the DEIS states.
Scott Crawford, the Jackson resident who accused the Corps of not seriously considering flood-mitigation strategies beyond Alternative D, argued that excluding tributary flood protection from any final plan would be disastrous for people who can’t self-evacuate.
“When these floods happen, I’m trapped in my home,” said Crawford, a wheelchair user who lives near Eubanks Creek. “The (DEIS) argues for a new lake plan touting its economic and development impact while completely ignoring induced flooding on Jackson’s tributaries.”
Crawford is part of a vocal group of homeowners who are furious that, first, the evolving lake plan promised to bring them flood relief—and now its replacement could have the opposite effect.
Jackson residents have also slammed Alternative D’s proposed dredging of LeFleur’s Bluff State Park—a 305-acre green space in the city that is home to an array of habitats and protected species. Under the updated lake proposal, 78 acres of parkland would be excavated to widen the existing river channel, reducing the park’s overall size by one-quarter.
“The lake plans are an outrageous misuse and misappropriation of taxpayer money,” Reese Partridge, a longtime resident and member of the local Audubon Society, said on July 10. “On the one hand, we’re told that the government is going to increase recreation with Alternative D, and on the other, take 25% of actual parkland and put it underwater for the sake of commercial development.”
Partridge joined other public-meeting attendees in backing a proposal that would make no structural changes to the Pearl River. Referred to as Alternative A1 in the DEIS, the non-structural plan calls for elevating and otherwise “floodproofing” structures in designated areas along the river, as well as voluntary property buyouts for residents open to relocating.
It would cost an estimated $50 million and eliminate the need for habitat mitigation efforts around the project area, according to Corps projections.
One of the few proponents of Alternative D at July’s public meetings was Gregory Divinity Sr., a pastor at the New Vineyard Church in South Jackson and lifelong city resident. Divinity expressed frustration at the lack of meaningful flood-control measures adopted in his lifetime, noting that South Jackson communities cannot afford further destruction to their properties.
“We’ve been talking about doing something about this since I was a junior in high school,” Divinity said at the Mississippi Public Broadcasting Auditorium on July 10. “If Alternative D is what we have on the table, we need to move forward with it.”
House Rep. Shanda Yates, I-Jackson, whose district has suffered repeated inundations over the years, also voiced support for the Corps’ new lake scheme.
“My constituents have had ongoing flooding issues for longer than their children have been alive,” she said on July 10. “The time to do something is beyond at this point. And looking at the options that have been presented to us … Alternative D seems to be the most reasonable option.”
Downstream Dissent
Monticello Mayor Martha Watts has long opposed plans to dredge and dam the Pearl River near Jackson, and the Corps’ updated lake proposal is no exception.
During a July 11 public meeting in Monticello—a municipality 62 miles downstream of Jackson— Watts reiterated her position that any version of One Lake would imperil her town’s economy and damage whole ecosystems along the lower Pearl. Widening the river’s channel and adding a new weir in Jackson could alter water levels and temperature downstream, she explained, threatening river-based tourism in Monticello and jeopardizing a local paper mill’s operations.
“Downstreamers are completely against any further alterations to our river,” said Watts, a Republican who grew up in Monticello and has teamed up with environmentalists to challenge past versions of One Lake. “Our communities will not survive without the quality of life that the Pearl offers.”
Other meeting attendees in Monticello criticized the Corps for putting the needs of two counties ahead of others.
“It certainly feels like someone’s land in Hinds County or Rankin County is worth more than the land that we have worked for,” State Sen. Jason Barrett, R-Brookhaven, who represents 56,000 people in southwest Mississippi, said on July 11.
Watts’ and Barrett’s sentiments were echoed at a separate public meeting in Slidell, La., a city northeast of New Orleans whose fishing and tourism industries are heavily reliant on the nearby Pearl River. Jessica Gauley, owner of a family kayak business on the lower Pearl, worries that further damming the river in Jackson would have a negative impact on water levels in her area.
“I cannot safely operate my business” when water levels are too low or too high, Gauley said at the Slidell Municipal Auditorium on July 11. “I don’t want to take that risk with people from all over the world.”
A Watershed Study, 28 Years In?
At the July public meetings downstream of Jackson, attendees urged the Corps to conduct a comprehensive watershed study of the entire Pearl River system before greenlighting a project that could have lasting effects all the way to Louisiana.
While the agency’s preliminary modeling suggests that neither Monticello nor Slidell would experience major differences in water quality under Alternative D, the DEIS acknowledges the need for additional research to better gauge the project’s impact on the lower Pearl. This includes analyzing potential sediment buildup under Alternative D and its competitors, the report states, as well as “further modeling” to better predict the possibility of increased flooding downstream.
The absence of a watershed study 28 years after John McGowan began floating a Two Lakes plan along the Pearl has confounded environmentalists and other critics, who argue such research is essential for a project of One Lake’s scale.
“How can you build a weir and new lake on a river that the Corps admits in (the DEIS) is not understood well enough?” Andrew Whitehurst, the water programming director at Healthy Gulf and a longtime critic of One Lake, told Corps and Levee Board representatives in Slidell on July 11. “Good scientific practice is to gather as much data as possible before you propose further alterations to a regulated river like the Pearl.”
To Whitehurst, Watts and other meeting participants in Slidell and Monticello, the Corps’ new lake plan is a clear example of a project designed to benefit Jackson with little regard for communities downstream.
“No river is exclusive to any one group, city or state,” Watts said. “For one group to decide the fate of those in the 100 miles below the project is unconscionable.”
The Corps accepted public comments on Alternative D and other proposals in the DEIS through Aug. 6 and has pledged to incorporate that feedback into its Final Environmental Draft Statement (FEIS), expected in December. A formal record of the decision from the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works is also expected by the end of the year.
Donna Ladd contributed to this story.
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