Pearl River Threatened by Private Development Project

The Pearl River is one of the most biodiverse rivers in the U.S. and the primary drinking water source for Jackson, Mississippi. But this natural treasure is threatened by a devastating private real estate development scheme masquerading as a flood control project. This “One Lake” project would dredge and dam the Pearl River to create new waterfront property, destroying vital fish and wildlife habitat, worsening Jackson’s flooding and drinking water crisis, increasing toxic contamination, and reducing freshwater flows critical to the region’s important seafood and tourism economies. The Biden Administration must stop this project and invest in environmentally-sustainable flood relief for the predominantly Black community of Jackson while protecting the Pearl River and all the communities and economies that rely on it.

Please join us in urging the Biden administration to stop the One Lake Project on the Pearl River.

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Administrator

Daniel

Blackman

EPA Region 4

FWS Mississippi Office

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FWS Mississippi Office

USACE

Pearl

River

USACE

Dear USACE/USFWS/USEPA,

I call on you to stop the One Lake Project on the Pearl River.

From its headwaters on native Choctaw lands, the Pearl River flows nearly 500-miles through Mississippi and Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico. The Pearl River provides habitat for more than 300 species of birds, fish, and wildlife, including the federally threatened Gulf sturgeon and ringed sawback turtle, and 125,000 acres of wetland and bottomland hardwood conservation lands. The Pearl supplies freshwater flows critical to the health of the Gulf of Mexico; the region’s oyster, crab, shrimp and tourism industries; and hundreds of industrial and municipal users.

The Pearl is the only public drinking water source for the city of Jackson, which includes 150,000 residents, 83 percent of whom are Black. The city has struggled for decades to maintain basic water and sewer service and is currently under an Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) consent decree to enforce established rules and regulations due to sewage discharge violations in the billions of gallons annually. In 2022 the city’s residents were left without clean drinking water for months when one of the City’s two drinking water treatment plants failed.

The Pearl River is threatened by the One Lake Project, which is a private real estate development scheme masquerading as a flood control project that threatens public health and safety, river and coastal ecosystems, and regional economies. The project will dredge 10-miles of the Pearl River, destroying 2,500 acres of mostly wetland habitat and disturbing eight highly contaminated toxic sites with no plan to protect public health. A new dam will be constructed to contain the dredged 1,900-acre impoundment, and the dredged material will be used to build new waterfront property for real estate development putting more people in harm’s way.  Moreover, the destruction of the riparian forest along the 10-mile dredged area will cause a harmful rise in the river’s water temperature.

In addition to the massive loss of floodplain, wetlands, and in-stream habitats, One Lake will worsen Jackson’s significant urban flash flooding and stormwater drainage problems. One Lake will permanently elevate water levels in eight tributary creeks that flow through primarily low-income Black neighborhoods in Jackson. During the four years of project construction, Jackson will be forced to somehow find an alternative water source for the one drinking water plant that was able to operate during the city’s most recent drinking water crisis. One Lake will then add to the city’s drinking water and water quality problems, including the discharge of billions of gallons of untreated and poorly treated sewage that has already closed the Pearl to public contact recreation in the Jackson area. The low-head dam will reduce and alter the delivery of freshwater flows and nutrients vital to a healthy river-Gulf ecosystem and the communities and industries that rely on those flows.

Instead of subsidizing private real estate development, the federal government should invest in already identified flood relief solutions, including setting some levees farther back from the river, investing in floodplain and wetland easements, targeted elevations, and voluntary relocations of structures in flood-prone areas. 
Thank you for your consideration of these issues.

Sincerely,

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