Paige

“My grandparents owned this and I grew up here. They built the house I am still living in. Clay and I started dating in high school. My only goal was to get out of Holly Bluff, Mississippi. We made it out for almost three years and lived in Houston, Texas. Clay wanted to farm so we came back home and raised our family here. Now the levee in our backyard that he built up over the last few weeks is the only thing keeping the backwater from flooding our home. Stagnant, filthy water that is not draining away. Our son got married at the first of February and was flooded out of his home in April. They moved in with us and who knows when they will return home. They are having a baby in December so we may have to make room for a nursery.

We have been on this land for generations and have never seen flooding like this. We have 3800 acres underwater and nothing will be planted this year. No corn, soybeans or cotton. This never should have happened. There was a system designed and approved in 1941 to prevent flooding after the great flood in 1927. The government built a cut-off channel through my grandfather’s land to move the water from the north delta to the Sunflower River faster. They told him it wouldn’t flood above 87 feet because of the systems of levees, gates, and pumps to send the backwater out. He gave them the land for the channel and built his home here believing it wouldn’t flood. But the government never got around to putting the pumps in. Now we are flooded at 98 1/2  feet. There has been a lot of rain this year and the water sits here like a bathtub until they open the gates to the Mississippi River. But those gates aren’t opening because the Mississippi is too high and the rains keep coming and in the states north of us.

More than 540,000 total acres are underwater in the south delta and from the air it looks like the Gulf of Mexico. The poorest people live in the lowest lying areas that are the first to flood. They are the most affected and don’t have other options. Emergency housing assistance runs out in three months, but this is a six-month flood. The Delta National Forest is close by and it is hard to see all of the animals trying to find food and dry land. I won’t drive at night because the deer take over the roads and I don’t want to hit one.”

Clay 

“The water started rising in February. The Mississippi River has been above flood level more than 100 days and is not going down anytime soon. I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn’t know it was going to be this bad. I have been farming Paige’s family land and my family’s land for 33 years.  My dad didn’t farm, but my granddad did. My son has gotten into farming so we are four generations and this will be the first year there is no crop. It hasn’t sunk in yet. We have had different degrees of flooding before, but nothing like this. There are 240,000 acres of farmland underwater right now in the south delta. Farmers never said much about the flooding before because we work around it and through it.  Deep down, we knew this day would come.

This flood is not a hurricane or tornado. It is an epic disaster that could have been prevented and has become a gross waste of our tax dollars. The only thing working in our favor it is such a big disaster, everyone here is now informed and we are speaking out. When they put levees along the Mississippi River from here north after the Great Flood in 1927, Congress knew it would send the water to the lower states faster and made a plan to help those affected areas. Louisiana and Arkansas got the levees, gates, and pumps and don’t have this problem with backwater. Mississippi was last on the list and just got the levees and gates. We had a flood in 1973 and it showed we still had problems. They tried to put the pumps in but by 1978, the EPA and environmental groups were active. They fought the pumps saying they were protecting the wetlands. They won. The EPA now realizes there has been a mistake and seems to be working with Corps of Engineers and the senators from Mississippi to make this right.

The pumps cost $125 million but the cost of not having them has been much more. The pumps were vetoed again in 2008. Since then there have been 300,000 ag damage claims paid out because of backwater flooding. That doesn’t include houses. There will be so much more after this flood. Farmers care about this environment more than anyone because we are here every day and spend our own money making it better. We have to educate people, but it is so hard from a rural area like this. I can’t farm right now, so that has left me a lot of time to speak out.  If they put in the pumps today, it would take four years for them to be up and running. Chances are, there won’t be a flood like this next year, but there is no guarantee. Knowing pumps may be coming gives me a little hope right now. I don’t want my son and the next generations of farmers to go through this. 

I have penciled in bad crops or bad prices, but never no crops. The good years can balance out the bad ones, but you can’t balance out no crop. Farmers only get one chance a year.  John Deere doesn’t care whether I have a crop or not. I am still going to have to pay for that cotton picker. We will make it somehow. We don’t have a choice.”