NYT editorial: Yazoo Pumps: They’re Back!

Like an indestructible ghoul in a low-grade horror flick, the Yazoo Pumps are rising again from the bureaucratic crypt.

First proposed in 1941, and kept alive ever since by a complacent Congress, the Yazoo Pumps may well be the most daft in a long line of environmentally destructive schemes undertaken by the Army Corps of Engineers at Congress’s request. The project calls for the corps to build the world’s largest pumping system, at a cost of more than $200 million, in the Mississippi Delta. The pumps would then drain 200,000 acres of valuable wetlands, hardwood forests and wildlife habitat so that a relatively small number of soybean farmers, who already drink liberally from the public trough, can plant more crops.

The project’s main champions are Mississippi’s two senators, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran, who say it’s necessary for the local economy and for flood control, assertions for which no persuasive evidence has ever been produced. The project has long been opposed by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Fish and Wildlife Service. But it has been kept alive by legislators eager to protect their own deals with the corps and by past E.P.A. administrators who, despite deep personal misgivings, have ducked a decision pending a final environmental impact statement.

That statement is expected to be published later this week, at which point there will be no further reason not to kill the project. Two officials can do the deed. One is Dirk Kempthorne, the interior secretary, who can refer the project for determination to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Few projects have survived this referral process. The other official is Stephen Johnson, the current E.P.A. administrator. Mr. Johnson can kill the project outright under section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which requires the E.P.A. to protect wetlands.

Over the years, the cozy and durable relationship between the Corps of Engineers and its pork-loving Congressional paymasters has produced one environmental misfortune after another. This is one that the Bush administration can and should prevent.

Paul Harrison, writing October 31st in the conservative Washington Times, concurs:

Another pending agricultural drainage project that is based on shoddy analysis and would cost more than $200 million is the Yazoo Pumps project in Mississippi. It relies on an antiquated, 66-year-old project authorization and an independent review retained by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that called the project's economic analysis severely and fundamentally flawed. Yazoo Pumps proposes 100 percent federal funding for construction of the world's largest hydraulic pumping plant in one of the most sparsely populated regions in the state of Mississippi. If built, it would damage more than 200,000 acres of ecologically significant wetlands in the heart of the Mississippi River migratory bird flyway and adversely affect threatened fish and wildlife. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service opposes this project, EPA has the power to veto this project under Clean Water Act section 404(c), and the president can direct the White House's Counsel on Environmental Quality to ensure that this project is never built.

Harrison's entire article is here.