The dream of a publicly accessible lake running through Metro Jackson, providing flood control and stimulating community development, will move closer to reality in coming weeks. The prospect of the LeFleur Lakes project becoming a reality has never been greater.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which earlier this year confirmed that the project would provide flood protection to the Metro Area, will present its findings in the near future to the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District. The Flood Control District—the government entity that is the official sponsor of the LeFleur Lakes project—views this development as a significant milestone in a lengthy, but necessary, journey.
The project is the dream of local entrepreneur and geologist John McGowan. McGowan is to be congratulated for his vision, for his perseverance, and most recently for the Corps' confirmation earlier this year of his idea that flood control and community development can complement one another.
That is why we at the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District stepped up three years ago to be the federally required local partner. We haven't taken this role lightly. The Flood Control District has been working closely with the Corps to evaluate the concept and to update the 1996 Levee Plan. We, and the Corps, have committed time, staff and over $2 million to the project, so far. Now, the Corps is in the process of compiling the components of our joint work product on the environmental and economic feasibility of this flood control concept and submitting a draft report to the Flood Control District.
We as a community will then have to decide how to proceed.
Clearly, a project of this magnitude requires a community consensus. Lately, there have been suggestions in some area media by supporters of this project that the Airport Parkway Project and Lefleur Lakes projects are mutually exclusive—that one would doom the other.
It is our understanding that the Airport Parkway Project is a federally authorized and funded transportation corridor. We see no direct correlation in the construction in the parkway and the construction of the LeFleur Lakes project.
We are striving to make the Lakes project work—and work well.
In months and years to come, other differences will surely emerge as well. But this project, while born of a single person's dream, is now the collective property of all of us. This will have to be a consensus project that works within the constraints of the political realities and federal environmental guidelines, and one that can attract funding from both public and private sources.
How ironic it will be if we look back in 10 years and see that our dream died, not because of opposition, but because the most passionate supporters couldn't reach a consensus on how to work within those constraints and still achieve the dream.
— Con Maloney, Hinds County representative to the Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District
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