Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board Plans Appeal in Map Modernization Program
CLARKSDALE, Miss., May 21, 2007 — The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board plans to file an appeal against the new warnings included on maps updated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Map Modernization Program. These warnings advise that the time- and water-tested levees could fail — with devastating consequences — and encourage property owners to purchase flood insurance.
“We are more concerned with the dire wording of the warnings on the maps than with the changes in the flood zones,” said Kelly Greenwood, Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board CEO. “The wording is so alarming that it will likely prompt mortgage lenders to begin requiring flood insurance for homes and businesses in communities protected by the levee. This could be economically disastrous for the Mississippi Delta.”
Greenwood says that the warning discounts the board’s flood-control structures and efforts to protect the citizens of the Delta. The warning states that areas protected from the one-percent, annual chance (100-year) flood of the Mississippi River may be at risk; when, in fact, the levees maintained by the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board offer greater than 500-year protection, which is only a .02 percent risk of main-line levee failure.
“Why effectively tax the citizens for 100-year flood insurance protection behind a levee that offers 500-year protection?” Greenwood said. “The mainline levee offers Project Flood Protection, which is substantially greater than 100-year protection.”
The Mississippi mainline levee system was developed and designed under the Flood Control Act of 1928 in response to the Great Flood of 1927 to pass, safely, the “maximum probable” event involving river levels several feet higher than anything recorded.
For 49 consecutive years, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has presented the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board with an award for Outstanding Maintenance of Flood Control Facilities. “Our levees cannot be compared to the levees in New Orleans or Missouri,” Greenwood said. “During one of the greatest disasters in the Mississippi Delta — the Great Flood of 1927 — our levees did not break.”
Formed by an act of the Legislature in 1884, the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board is a constitutional body of the State of Mississippi headquartered in Clarksdale, Miss., and is comprised of all or portions of ten Delta counties, including DeSoto, Tunica, Coahoma, Sunflower, Quitman, Tallahatchie, Leflore, Humphreys, Holmes and Yazoo. The Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board is responsible for the first 98 miles of mainline Mississippi River levee in the state and 18 miles of backwater levees within the Mississippi Delta. They are also responsible for minor maintenance on some 330 miles of interior rivers and streams.
To view maps, visit: http://geology.deq.ms.gov/floodmaps/status.aspx.
For more information on the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board, call 662-624-4397.
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