Floodway protection

The U.S. Corps of Engineers concedes it made an erroneous calculation regarding how many acres should be set aside to offset the impact of the St. Johns Bayou-New Madrid Floodway project.

The corps and other officials say correcting the mitigation plan will delay the $85 million project a couple of months. Environmental activists who have opposed the floodway plan ever since its inception 20 years ago say that the corps deliberately skewed its figures and that this setback will effectively kill the project.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorialized earlier this week: "Now would be an excellent time to scrap the whole thing. Without even considering the loss of irreplaceable wetlands -- which ought to be a prime consideration -- the project makes no economic sense."

For residents of the floodway area, which extends from Sikeston and Charleston on the north to New Madrid on the south, those are fighting words. They point to the benefits of protection from flooding, which occurs unnaturally throughout the year instead of just during seasonally heavy rains, thanks to upstream alterations in the flow of the Mississippi River and its major tributaries.

For residents of tiny Pinhook, a community with a long and rich African-American history, the persistent flooding means more than being temporarily disconnected from the rest of the world. It also means not being able to drink the water in their homes and not being able to flush their toilets.

Major conservation organizations such as the Missouri Conservation Department and Ducks Unlimited favor the floodway project, citing such advantages as better protection for Big Oak Tree State Park, a vestige of Southeast Missouri's vast swamps, whose flora is imperiled by the possibility of year-around flooding.

Residents and officials of the affected area have made an earnest effort to get the same flood protection afforded to opponents of the plan, most of which reside in areas not prone to flooding or behind 500-year floodwalls built by the same Corps of Engineers in charge of the St. Johns Bayou-New Madrid Floodway project. These residents -- and federal legislators who represent them -- are determined to see the project completed.