Supporters of a pump project in the lower Mississippi Delta region say new documents appear to show environmental studies were forwarded to Congress when an earlier version of the plan was being considered in 1983.
Those documents form the crux of the legal position that if Congress had approved the pumps, the Environmental Protection Agency had no authority for its veto of the Yazoo Backwater Project earlier this year.
The Vicksburg Post reported this week that letters obtained by the Board of Mississippi Levee Commissioners by a Freedom of Information Act request show that Col. James W. Ray, then-executive director of the engineer staff for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, notified chairmen of public works committees in both houses of Congress of a final environmental study and other reports vital to the project’s approval 25 years ago.
