TYLERTOWN — Monticello Mayor Martha Watts met with Walthall County supervisors on July 18 to seek support in opposing the One Lake proposal for the Pearl River near Jackson.
Watts alleges the project, spearheaded by the Hinds-Rankin Flood Management District as flood control for the Jackson area, has the potential to harm the condition of the watershed south of Jackson all the way to the Gulf Coast, causing problems for residents and businesses.
“The Ross Barnett Reservoir was billed as a flood control project, but it wasn’t for us,” Watts said. The reservoir “has caused bank erosion ... because of how the Ross Barnett gates are operated.”
Watts claimed that no studies of the possible effects of the One Lake project have been made south of Hinds County, and that none of the proponents of the project in Jackson or federal supporters in Washington, D.C., had talked to municipal or county officials downriver about how they might be affected.
She said she fears the water level in the river could fall too low if the project, which includes dredging and the construction of a 1,500-foot weir with a gate, goes forward.
“We need to maintain the water level,” Watts said. “Our Georgia-Pacific plant is a discharger, and it needs to intake water. It can’t do that if the water level is too low or too warm.
“We have Georgia-Pacific, and we need Georgia-Pacific ... I understand this would be economic development for Jackson, but it’s not their river.”
Watts said a number of local governments and agencies, including Monticello, Columbia, Lawrence and Marion counties and the Department of Marine Resources in Mississippi had passed resolutions opposing the project, as well as the Louisiana Senate.
“This is a situation where we’re going to miss the Pearl River Basin Development District,” county engineer Jeff Dungan told the board. “They would have been concerned in this and would have advised you well.
“The Hinds-Rankin flood district has to convince the folks downriver that this is good for everybody. If they can’t, they have a problem.”
Asked his opinion of the project later, Dungan told board members that he didn’t know enough about it to give one.
However, he said the flood management district had related documents online that they could read for themselves.
The board took no action on the matter.
