CLEVELAND, Miss.–Getting the Yazoo Pumps project built out to help stop flooding in that river basin is a priority this year for the Delta Council. The group held its 89th annual meeting at the Bologna Performing Arts Center on the campus of Delta State University Friday.
“We will leave this state better than we found it and we will pave the way for the next great generation of Mississippians,” said Gov. Tate Reeves, who served as the keynote speaker for the meeting, “to live, to work, to play and to raise a family right here at home.”
But Reeves’ speech was not the one which outlined prisorities. Part of the formation of the group nearly nine decades ago was to figure out better ways to help the people of the Delta, partly with flood control. The Yazoo Backwater Pumps Project, after being on hold for many years, partly because of objections from the Environmental Protection Agency, now has a green light.
Tripp Hayes, the incoming president of the Delta Council, said it’s now a priority.
Mississippi Ag Commissioner Andy Gipson has also made getting the project done a priority for his office.
