Jackson Free Press

Rankin-Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District Board Chairman Gary Rhoads said today that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is to blame for cost increases in a multi-million-dollar study of flood control on the Pearl River between Hinds and Rankin counties.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will co-finance a new feasibility study for the Pearl River containing a possible mixture of a levee expansion and a new lake. But U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Project Manager Gary Walker told the board today that the cost of that study could jump to $4 million, nearly doubling the plan's original $2.2 million estimate the Corps provided to the board last year.

Many of the additional costs are due to post-Katrina requirements, Walker told the levee board.

"You have to have more review of your finished product, and the cost-estimate requirement has to be more rigid now," Walker told the Jackson Free Press. He explained that the Corps had under-estimated the cost of some authorized projects in the recent past. Corps leaders, he said, now wanted to make sure the entire price of any development is accurately accounted for.

Walker said the Corps also must take into account that the old levee plan the Corps approved for the area now must change dramatically because of new development along the predetermined paths for the levees.

Rhoads complained to Walker, however, that the Corps approved new development in areas targeted for levees.

"[T]hose buildings we're talking about ... they got a permit from the Corps of Engineers to build it. If they were going to build a project going though there they should've never let the (authorization) go," Rhoads said. "Y'all gave the authorization. Am I correct?"

Walker pointed out that the Corps, at the time, "hadn't authorized" the levee expansion and therefore had no project conflict at the time of the development's approval.