A U.S. Corps of Engineers report on Friday dealt what could be a fatal blow to a decades-long strategy to build lakefront development along the Pearl River between Jackson and Rankin County with the often-disputed promise of it being the top flood-control solution.
Supporters of One Lake, the larger Two Lakes plan before being forced to scale it back, have long maintained that a lake/development strategy is the best and affordable form of mitigating flooding effects along the Pearl River. The Rankin-Hinds Flood and Drainage Control District, referred to locally as the Levee Board, worked with the nonprofit Pearl River Vision Foundation, chose the One Lake plan as the locally preferred option for flood control in the Jackson area—a plan that the U.S. Corps of Engineers has to approve before it can move forward.
Long-time oilman John McGowan, who died in November 2023, set up the Pearl River Vision Foundation to push for One Lake. If it were to ever happen, One Lake would provide economic-development benefits on both sides of the volatile river, which destroyed immense property in the 1979 flood, which was a 100-year flood event, which drove up to 17,000 local residents from their homes.
The long-anticipated Draft Environmental Impact Statement, a 300-page report released today, took issue with the promised cost of the One Lake project, which it calls “Alternative C.”
“Alternative C, as presented in the Section 211 Report, is not justified under the traditional USACE benefit-cost analysis,” the Corps’ DEIS stated today.” The LPP (linear performance pricing) costs and benefits are presented as a range of costs and benefits due to the current level of design. The LPP estimated project first cost range between a low of $1,046,068,000 to a high of $ 2,122,260,000 to produce a range of net benefits of—$25,915,800 to—$66,300,800 with a BCR (benefit-cost ratio) of 0.4 to 0.2. Alternative C accrues a damage reduction of $14,279,000, approximately 30 percent of the future without-project damages. Alternative C would accrue expected annual damage (EAD) reductions of $8,573,000, approximately 20 percent of the without-project EAD of $42,330,000.”
