A speaker at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ public engagement meeting at Slidell, La., on May 23, 2022, asked: “What makes the One Lake plan the “Locally Preferred Plan?” He was talking about the long-time waterfront development and flood-mitigation strategy that many Jackson-area elected officials, property owners and businessmen have pushed for years as the only possible way to reduce Pearl River flooding.
At first glance, the answer seems obvious. The One Lake plan will allegedly make Jackson great. However, the answer might be a little muddier if we consider the purpose of what will become the congressionally authorized project. It is for reducing flood damages in the Jackson metro, and many of our region’s residents need the help. The Pearl River floods several neighborhoods in Northeast Jackson, and its tributaries flood homes throughout the city.
The One Lake plan will not solve these problems. Yet many of us believe that a plan formulated for real-estate development could also provide optimal flood risk alleviation. We’ve been misled.
Northside Sun’s Unverified Lake Support
Northside Sun owner and publisher Wyatt Emmerich admits that he drank the lake project Kool-Aid from day one. Unfortunately, his newspaper has incessantly fed that Kool-Aid to residents of the Jackson metro for over 26 years and through several versions of the lake plan.
The Northside Sun introduced the original and even more ambitious Two Lakes idea, the brainchild of oilman John McGowan, on Feb. 20, 1997. Two Lakes, very similar to what the same backers would call the Lefleur Lakes project, was the newspaper’s top headline news and had an accompanying editorial calling it “McGowan’s lake.” The project would “eliminate flooding,” according to a glowing report full of “mathematical calculations,” which you could “bet” was “impeccable,” Emmerich’s editorial promised.
Mr. Emmerich did anticipate resistance. A “potential roadblock” was the Environmental Protection Agency, he wrote. The headline article further noted that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers supported the project but was “forbidden by federal regulations from pursuing” it. The editorial pleaded with the reader: Don’t let the “mammoth” bureaucracy “kill this great idea.”
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