The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has modified contested plans to protect Jackson communities from Pearl River flooding, suggesting new features that could raise the project’s cost by hundreds of millions of dollars.
On July 3, the Corps issued a Revised Draft Environmental Impact Statement (RDEIS) with two similar proposals to address persistent, destructive flooding from the Pearl. One of those plans is a scaled-down version of “One Lake,” the decades-old, continually evolving scheme to build a lake along the river that would offer flood relief and development opportunities—but could have significant consequences downstream.
The two plans were originally part of a Corps study from June 2024, which received over 6,000 public comments following its release, the agency states on its project website. The RDEIS amends those plans to include new levees near flood-prone neighborhoods—a change it calculates would protect up to 745 additional homes but significantly inflate each project’s price tag…