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Mississippi flood overwhelms miles-long sandbag wall
Associated Press ^ | 20 May 2019 | Jeff Amy

Posted on 05/21/2019 4:18:46 AM PDT by blueplum

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Floodwaters overwhelmed a miles-long sandbag barrier over the weekend, drenching another community in the southern end of the Mississippi Delta. Volunteers, prisoners and others had stacked 100,000 sandbags and more than 600 wire flood-control baskets, trying to keep water out of hundreds of homes at Eagle Lake, north of Vicksburg.

But water trapped inside a levee system keeps rising...

...The lake is among multiple oxbow lakes along the lower Mississippi River that are lined with houses, a mix of permanent residences and weekend getaways. It's another casualty in a backwater flood that's the highest since 1973, before the Yazoo backwater levee was completed. The project was supposed to include a pumping station to lift water from the closed-in area and release it the Mississippi River, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected the pump as harmful to wetlands inside the closed-in area....

(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...


TOPICS: Agriculture; Local News
KEYWORDS: epa; epicfloods; mississippi; mississippidelta
that's a whole lot of sandbags!
1 posted on 05/21/2019 4:18:46 AM PDT by blueplum
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To: blueplum

Key phrase: The project was supposed to include a pumping station to lift water from the closed-in area and release it the Mississippi River, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected the pump as harmful to wetlands inside the closed-in area


2 posted on 05/21/2019 4:28:10 AM PDT by Don W (When blacks riot, neighbourhoods and cities burn. When whites riot, nations and continents burn.)
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To: Don W

More water on the way here in northern Wi. we had another 3 inches of rain.

Heading their way.


3 posted on 05/21/2019 4:32:45 AM PDT by riverrunner ( o the public,)
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To: blueplum
This should not have happened. It was a poor design.

These Oxbows cause all kinds of trouble. We had one in our area and some stupid little "special" fish got trapped in the bow and were breeding. In the meantime, the bow was cutting into a hill and a house was starting to fall off a cliff above the oxbow.

The solution was ridiculous and all to save the stupid little fish.

The patio part of the house did eventually fall.

We're the government and we're here to help!!

4 posted on 05/21/2019 4:33:49 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Don W

Yeh...they get a little nutsy with their wetlands. Of course the Post Office in our area was TOTALLY built in Wetlands...cuz they literally stole the land.


5 posted on 05/21/2019 4:35:51 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Sacajaweau
I get eaten alive by mosquitoes and all their friends- a stink bug bit me once (thankfully, no moose as of yet).

I don’t think I’ll be enjoying any of these wetlands.

6 posted on 05/21/2019 4:54:12 AM PDT by NativeSon ( Grease the floor with Crisco when I dance the Disco)
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To: NativeSon
The problem with wetlands is how they determine them.

We had a project and they came out and said a huge area was a wetland. It just wasn't so. We had photos of when it was a peach orchard in the early 1900's....and peaches don't grow in wetlands.

7 posted on 05/21/2019 5:16:08 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: blueplum

So weird to have a story like that, but no photos, in 2019.


8 posted on 05/21/2019 5:18:54 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
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To: Sacajaweau
With enough rain put down in a short amount of time, anywhere can become a “wetland”.

A century or so ago, large, peach orchards were in the Dinétah - no wetlands.

9 posted on 05/21/2019 5:27:48 AM PDT by NativeSon ( Grease the floor with Crisco when I dance the Disco)
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To: NativeSon

Not so....that’s not how they are determined.


10 posted on 05/21/2019 5:34:38 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Don W

Government sucks at everything it touches.


11 posted on 05/21/2019 5:49:53 AM PDT by shanover (...To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.-S.Adams)
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To: shanover

I apparently had the idea that the EPA was going to get a much needed tuning up when Mr. Trump was elected, but it looks like there are still a few problems or problem people & common sense still has not made enough inroads. Of course, this is just one area where they do poorly. It’s often been suggested that we could do without the EPA & it’s beginning to look that way unless they can somehow get their act together.


12 posted on 05/21/2019 6:17:48 AM PDT by oldtech
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To: shanover

Yes. I can’t think of one single thing that the feral gubment touches that they don’t somehow eff up. Pretty much the same thing goes for state and local gubment as well.

I have a dream but I’ll never see it fulfilled.

Surely this country is on its last gasps.


13 posted on 05/21/2019 6:50:24 AM PDT by Sequoyah101 (It feels like we have exchanged our dreams for survival. We just hava few days that don't suck.)
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To: oldtech

EPA, get act together? In what universe?

EPA is a sham agency created by tricky dicky and it should be abolished. Completely. Reigning in EPA is another Trump promise gone to half-measures and lip service.


14 posted on 05/21/2019 6:52:31 AM PDT by Sequoyah101 (It feels like we have exchanged our dreams for survival. We just hava few days that don't suck.)
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To: blueplum

***It’s another casualty in a backwater flood that’s the highest since 1973,***

“PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE GREAT 1927 FLOOD CURTAIN!”


15 posted on 05/21/2019 7:05:32 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Sacajaweau

I know but consider how local epa “officials” call the shots, intermittent changes in rainfall and available water can change vegetation and what makes if it home in it.


16 posted on 05/21/2019 7:26:15 AM PDT by NativeSon ( Grease the floor with Crisco when I dance the Disco)
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To: NativeSon

We do soil samples...not just look see at vegetation.


17 posted on 05/21/2019 8:00:57 AM PDT by Sacajaweau
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To: Sacajaweau

Good to know. Are you in the “business”?


18 posted on 05/21/2019 10:31:29 AM PDT by NativeSon ( Grease the floor with Crisco when I dance the Disco)
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To: blueplum
but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rejected the pump as harmful to wetlands inside the closed-in area....

A pump isn't going to be harmful to wetlands unless it is used all the time, excessively, to keep them from being wetlands. Maybe what they meant, but did not want to say, was the presence of the means to turn wetlands into drylands would be a temptation that local politicians would easily succumb to, to get votes or to profit from unwise overdevelopment in low areas that should remain sloughs to catch runoff and prevent flooding. I used to live on the floodplain of the Mississippi- much of the problem wasn't that people lived there on he sand ridges but that developers were often politicians who would not leave the natural sloughs alone and they used the law to their advantage to get such land ha had once been se aside as protection for existing neighborhoods, and filled them in to get space to build more subdivisions, often even higher than the natural ridges that were inhabited because they were not flood prone. They also cut across sloughs with roadbeds that blocked the movement of water to and from the river, turning them into shallow lakes. When this movement of water was blocked, cattails would quickly begin the process of filling in the enclosed lakes and over time this also further reduced he amount of area to which runoff or rising water could be diverted.

19 posted on 05/22/2019 11:52:43 AM PDT by piasa (Attitude adjustments offered here free of charge.)
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