Plans are moving ahead this week for two massive projects that would deliver 100-year flood protection for the lower Mississippi Valley. The question is whether the money and political will exists for the two protection systems to materialize.

其中一个项目是拟议的2新利18备用网址0亿美元的Barataria Levee系统，该系统将为七个南路易斯安那州教区提供100年的风暴潮保护，并融入该地区的整体风暴保护系统。另一个项目涉及一个2.2亿美元的抽水系统，这将是Yazoo Backwater项目的最后一项功能，该项目于1941年获得了国会授权，此后一直在逐步前进。

鉴于过去十年几乎每年都破坏了南三角洲的历史性洪水，该泵项目一直在获得联邦和州的支持，并且越来越乐观的乐观情绪，该系统最终可以实现。

“我认为这是完成该项目的好机会，” Dawson＆Associates的高级顾问Michael Walsh少校说。

Both the pump and levee projects, Walsh says, would ultimately bode well for economic growth in the region. “We’ve seen over time when bonding agencies come into communities, before they set a price for their bonds, they ask ‘Do you have a resilience plan?’ he says. “And if not, bond companies are looking at it as a higher risk and maybe not going into that community for a bond.”

雄心勃勃的新堤防计划

上个月，美国陆军工程兵团提出了修订的Barataria堤防系统的修订计划，该计划将几乎是上述提案中概述的高程，跨度和几年的保护。

队的新计划,12月11日发布poses a 30.6-mile levee system with an elevation of 14 ft between Luling and Raceland, offering protection to Ascension, Assumption, Jefferson, Lafourche, St. Charles, St. John and St. James parishes. Construction would begin in 2023 and conclude in 2026.

A tentatively selected plan for the project, released in November 2019, outlined a 50-year levee system that would span 18.3 miles with an elevation of 7.5 ft, coming in at a cost of $514 million.

“Once they got in and started designing and modeling the tentatively selected plan, it was realized that a bigger system was needed,” says Corps New Orleans spokesman Matt Roe.

Modeling of the study area provided new data the Corps used to develop and recalibrate its report to accommodate a 100-year system.

本周，军团一直在举行虚拟会议，以征求公众对修订计划的评论。公众审查期结束于1月25日。

不过，为这项数十亿美元的项目获得资金将很棘手，因为获得联邦资金的窗口可能仍然有两年的时间。“The project is likely going to need Congressional approval under the WRDA (Water Resources Development Act), and that’s going to take at least two years,” says Norma Jean Mattei, a member of the Mississippi River Commission and civil engineering professor at the University of New Orleans.

Congress votes on a WRDA bill every other year and just approved the most recent version of the legislation at the end of 2020.

80年

在密西西比州，本周对长期以来的Yazoo Backwater Area Pumps项目的支持越来越大。

On Monday, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler visited Mississippi to sign a memorandum of understanding pledging to complete the Yazoo Backwater Area Pumps Project. In December 2020, the EPA indicated it does not object to a revised proposal for the project, even though the agency vetoed the pump system in 2008 because of its impact on thousands of acres of wetlands.

In December the Corps also reversed its previous opposition to the pumps, saying “These changes are not anticipated to convert any wetlands to non-wetlands, because precipitation is the driving force in sustaining wetlands in the Yazoo Study Area."

周一,公众评论期最后一个博士aft of the Corps’ project plan ended. From there, the Corps’ Vicksburg office will submit a recommendation to the Corps’ Mississippi Valley Division, which will vote on the plan. The report would then go to Congress for approval and to secure funding.

The hope is that by moving the project forward, it will address the kind of severe flooding the region has experienced for nine of the past 10 years, says Kent Parrish, senior project manager with the Corps’ Vicksburg office. “The citizens have just been clamoring for help,” he says. “So they approached Congress asking if anything can be done.”

The last cost estimate for the project was for $220 million, but likely costs needed for the project have increased in the 14 years since the estimate was put together.

The significant, repeated flooding that’s devastated the region over the past decade could be what finally pushes the project to completion, Mattei says.

“We’ve had disastrous, high water situations, and Backwater has flooded for extended periods of time,” Mattei says. “Because of that, I think there’s a realization that the pumps should be a higher priority.”