Back in February, Delta Council leadership began talking about the prospect of contracting a photographer to spend a couple of weeks in the south Delta region, documenting the backwater flood.
Instead of hiring it out, Delta Council employee Mary Catherine Brooks stepped up and volunteered to do the project herself.
“I didn’t grow up in the Delta, and I wanted to learn more about the Delta,” Brooks told the Indianola Rotary Club this week. “What was supposed to be two week project has turned into six months.”
What is now being called “The Forgotten Backwater Flood” has turned into Brooks’ passion and her own personal mission to shine a light on the 550,000 acres that have been flooded in the region for the first half of 2019.
“Five-hundred and fifty thousand acres is more than New York City and Los Angeles combined,” Brooks said. “It is more sparsely populated, but the lives there are still just as affected and matter as much as any other taxpayers in the United States.”
At the center of the backwater flood lies a political controversy, which seems to be coming to a head.
Years ago, Congress approved the construction of the Yazoo Backwater Pumps, which if they were fully operational, Brooks said would have prevented much of the devastation citizens and wildlife are experiencing in the flooded area.
The pumps, however, had opposition, and according to the Mississippi Levee Board, the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the $220 million project in 2008 under the George W. Bush administration.
The levee board said construction of the pumps would have prevented over $350 million in damages to the region from 2008-2018.
Brooks said the pumps would have kept the flood stage to a point that would have likely saved hundreds of homes, which have been underwater for months.
Brooks has spent 10 to 12 hours a day, many times five days a week, traveling the south Delta, documenting the people, wildlife and homes affected by the flood.
She said the Forgotten Backwater Flood Facebook page has thousands of pictures of the flood, with stills and drone footage, as well as interviews with those who have suffered the most from the flooding event.
Brooks said she has talked to families who have had to alternate sending kids to school and parents to work in order to keep water pumping away from their homes.
One mother, she said, lost her job because she had missed too many days, tending to her home.
Small businesses in the area have also closed their doors due to months of people not being able to access them by main roads.
Brooks’ main mission is to get the word about this flood outside Mississippi.
“If we don’t educate the public and get this outside of the couple of counties affected, we are never going to get this changed,” she said.
Just this week, over a dozen wildlife related companies and organizations took a stand, withdrawing from the Mississippi Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Extravaganza, after event organizers apparently would not allow an advocate for the pumps to purchase a booth and educate attendees on the issue.
Among those pulling out of the event, which is slated to take place this weekend, is the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries & Parks, which is not associated with the non-profit Wildlife Federation.
“Earlier today, the Commission on Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks, meeting by a specially-called teleconference voted unanimously to withdraw from the Extravaganza, and participation in future events with the Federation, until further notice,” MDWFP said in a statement earlier this week.
