Plans for a destination resort facility at Sardis Lake have drawn protests from some Leflore County leaders concerned about flood control.
A meeting regarding development within the area of Sardis Reservoir was held behind closed doors at the Greenwood-Leflore County Chamber of Commerce Friday afternoon.
The city of Sardis is requesting a transfer of land leased and land owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the city. The land is currently used to manage floodwaters from Northeast Mississippi.
According to the executive summary of the Sardis Lake Recreation and Tourism Project, drafted March 25, 2009, the city selected Southern Developers Realty Inc. as the master developer.
The proposed project would install a 300-unit condo hotel lodge, conference center, retail village, 1,600 single-family residential units, a 36-hole golf course, indoor water park and hotel, marina and other amenities.
The development would be on about 2,064 acres of wooded hills and ridge tops within six miles of Interstate 55. The city of Sardis proposes that more than 900 jobs would be created, $850 million in construction investment, $18 million in earnings increase and an annual increase of $12 million in sales and taxes and $13 million of property taxes.
The city of Sardis has already begun efforts to develop the area. In 2003, the city annexed the the leased area in order to provide municipal services.
However, Leflore County officials said economic development in the Sardis area should not be pursued at the expense of the safety of the Delta. Sardis Lake is one of four reservoirs built in Northeast Mississippi as a flood control mechanism.
Leflore County Administrator Sam Abraham said he voiced opposition to the development during Friday’s meeting.
“I’m all for economic development,” he said. “But not at the expense of potentially harming the Delta. There is no reason for us to support this.”
Abraham explained that if development were to occur in the area proposed, downstream communities could be endangered. He said plans currently are being constructed around 100-year flood histories, but that data could prove inaccurate.
“I’m not willing to allow this to happen and just hope that we don’t have a flood larger than we’ve had in the past 100 years,” Abraham said.
Angela Curry, executive director of the Greenwood-Leflore-Carroll Economic Development Foundation, and Leflore County District 5 Supervisor Robert Collins also objected to the project at the meeting.
“No one likes to see economic development more than I do,” Curry said. “But not when it puts other communities at risk.”
Collins said he hopes the other county supervisors will stand behind adopting a resolution against the project.
“There no way I can be for any sort of development in something intended for flood protection,” he said. “This is bad for the Delta.”
The Commonwealth was not allowed to attend Friday’s meeting, which Delta Council Executive Director Chip Morgan said was invitation-only.
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker’s legislative director, Susan Sweat, said the meeting was closed to the media to encourage those attending to express their opinions openly. Hugh Carroll, legislative assistant in Wicker’s office, also attended.
“We had a good meeting. We were here to listen and try to understand about development and flood control,” Sweat said after the meeting. “We came down here to gather information.”
In February 2009, the Delta Council Flood Committee adopted a resolution declaring that the Congress and Army Corps of Engineers maintain the current operational plan for the four main flood reservoirs, including Sardis Lake. The resolution urges that no changes be made to the current land uses under the management of the Corps of Engineers, unless the Corps determines that there would be no additional flood risk or other consequences as a result of the development.
The resolution also urges that any departure from the plan be accompanied by a public meeting throughout the Yazoo Headwater and Tributaries project area. It is not clear if Friday’s invitation-only meeting was intended to be one of those “public meetings.”
According to a letter sent to Wicker and U.S. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Travis Childers, Delta Council asked that any transfer of title include language prohibiting any change in the operational plan and rule curve for all four lakes — Sardis, Enid, Grenada and Arkabutla — without congressional approval.
The letter, signed by then Delta Council President John Phillips and Butch Scipper, vice-chairman of the Flood Control Committee, stressed the importance of the reservoirs in holding floodwater back.
The concern from the Delta, the letter states, is that allowing land-based developments in the floodplains would generate a “competing interest” to flood protection downstream.
“Even though we sustained significant significant flooding throughout the Yazoo River Basin during all of these years (1973, 1983, 1991, 1994, 1997 and 2004), the capacity to impound floodwaters from the Northeast Mississippi in these four reservoirs once again, proved to be the difference between significant flooding and catastrophic conditions,” the letter states.
