HOLLY BLUFF — A big drain started Thursday in the southernmost tip of the 4,093 square miles of farmland and forest known as the Yazoo Backwater Area.

An outpouring of another type started earlier.

Farmers, elevator operators and small business owners say the economic drain caused by repeated flooding — and a lack of pumps to prevent what have become near-annual disasters — is threatening the very livelihood of the Delta communities dependent on the farming industry.

“In agriculture, we’re all tied together. One business affects the next. We all share in the good years and the bad years, and ultimately it trickles on down to Vicksburg,” said David Wansley, manager of the Valley Park elevator, which stores soybeans and grains when harvested from some of America’s richest land. “The job market is very slim here and with so many farmers cutting back due to the flooding, people in the south Delta are leaving.”

The four, 30-foot-wide gates of the Steele Bayou Control Structure operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were closed for nearly a month.

While closed, overland flooding from the Mississippi River was blocked. But in the interim an estimated 394,000 acres inside the levees went under. Of that, 152,000 acres would be growing food or fiber crops — but might or might not grow anything this year — a fact that leaves seasonal farmworkers jobless and on unemployment, if available.

“It’s going to take about three weeks for the water to run out,” estimated Robert Simrall, the Corps’ chief of water control.

That means backwater area farmers such as John Phillips — who had planted on about 20 percent of his land before it was flooded — won’t be able to get into his fields to replant until the end of June or early July. By that time, it wil be feasible to plant only soybeans, and the yields likely will be about half that of a normal crop’s. The smaller crop means Phillips will hire fewer hands and the lower yields mean Wansley won’t need as many employees at the elevator.

“We usually pick up three or four part-time workers in the fall, and we try to use local people. I don’t see that happening this year,” said Wansley. “It knocks our full-time guys out, too. Years like this one and last year — there won’t be a lot of overtime, if any — and those guys count on that extra money being there every year. If they’re not making it, they can’t spend it.”

Karl Holcomb knows firsthand about the agricultural economic trickle-down effect in the backwater area. His father, Rudy, started the family’s crop-dusting business, Holcomb Aerial Service, in 1972. He expects flooding this year to cause some farmers to forego some planting altogether, which he figures will cut his profits by about 20 percent.

“Agriculture is the mainstay of what we do here, and when the farmers are in a bind it gets passed right on down to us,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have to pass it down, too. We may not hire but one employee this year instead of two, and we probably won’t have them on as long as usual. Our spending will go down. We do a lot of shopping in Vicksburg — whether it’s at the hardware store or just going out to lunch — but we’re going to have to do less of it.”

Backwater flooding this year and in 2008 has produced the third and sixth highest water stages since 1978, when the levees surrounding the area were completed. As part of the total project designed after the 1927 flood, pumps were supposed to be in place at Steele Bayou to remove the impounded water.

Despite the efforts of stakeholders who support completion of the design, the most recent — and perhaps permanent — setback has been a 2008 Environmental Protection Agency veto under the Clean Water Act, based on a finding that removing the water inside the levee would cause environmental damage outside the levee.

So the vast area remains vulnerable due to the Corps of Engineers lacking the money or authority to complete the design. It’s like a cook who devised a recipe — but has prepare it without a key ingredient.

During late-season flooding this year, Steele Bayou gates were closed for more than a month, at which point the water stage inside the structure was 92.3 feet. The Corps estimated a total of 344,000 acres of forest and farmland flooded. 

Last year, in most cases, farmers were only delayed in planting. But the back-to-back hit has many farmers not only hiring fewer hands and spending less money locally, it has them reconsidering farming altogether.

“After two years like the ones we’re going through now, a lot of farmers I talk to are saying, ‘maybe I need to look at one of these reforestation programs,’” said Wansley. “There’s definitely been a rise in the number of people participating in reforestation, and this year the programs are offering even more incentives.”

Since the U.S. Department of Agriculture initiated the Wetlands Reserve Program in 1992, about 250 farmers in Mississippi have leased an estimated 100,000 acres of cropland to be converted into bottomland hardwood forest. The department’s Conservation Reserve Program began in 1986, and as of 2007 had more than 60,000 acres under contract in Warren, Issaquena, Sharkey and Yazoo counties alone.

Myriad private and government programs exist to reforest the Delta, which is what environmental groups have advocated, and farmers find them attractive for a number of reasons. The leases provide an annual check, landowners retain all rights to hunt on the land and they’re able to cash in on the harvest of some the trees every decade or so. However, Phillips — who has participated in the Conservation Reserve Program on a small scale — said the programs do nothing for the local economy.

“The buck stops at the landowner,” he said. “If the landowner wants to turn all of his land over to reforestation, he’s going to get his money. But what’s going to happen to the jobs that were associated with that land when it was being farmed? What’s going to happen to the gin, the elevator and all the people who depend on the row crop production to put food on their tables?”

Phillips, 59, has been farming in the Holly Bluff area for nearly his entire life — just as his father did before him — and said he doesn’t want to see the farming culture of the south Delta disintegrate.

“I don’t want to take away the opportunity for people to farm here — the opportunity for my family to farm here,” Phillips said. “Agriculture is about the only opportunity we have here. Seventy percent of the people who work for me, their fathers worked for my father. They’re my best friends.” 

A recreational pilot, Phillips often flies over his and his neighbors’ fields to survey the damage caused by flooding. From above, the scene looks like a patchwork of unnatural lakes with the tops of central-pivot irrigation systems poking out of the water here and there. Some of fields remain relatively dry, as the owners have built their own levees around them and use small pumps to keep the water out.

Phillips sees the crop loss and the associated hardships brought onto his community as completely unnecessary. The pumps — which were promised by the Corps as part of the Yazoo Backwater Project that cages in the area by levees — should be preventing the economic drain, he said.

Originally authorized by Congress in 1941, the pumps are the lone aspect of the levee project yet to be completed. The scope and design of the pumps has changed over the years, with the latest plan calling for a $220 million structure capable of pumping out 14,000 cubic feet per second.

The pumps would be turned on only when the water stage inside the backwater area reaches 87 feet — about a foot beyond where crops begin to go under water. In 23 of the 31 years since the levees were completed, the backwater area water stage has topped out beyond 87 feet. 

Peter Nimrod, chief engineer for the Mississippi Levee Board, said possible legal action could be taken against the EPA to challenge the veto.

“The levee board is still looking at our options and alternatives for the project, one of which is to pursue a lawsuit against the EPA to challenge their authority to veto the pumps,” he said. 

In the meantime, farmers like Phillips can only watch the water rise and fall off their crops year after year and hope for the best. Still, he wonders how long the farmers can hold out until they finally decide to call it quits and sell the land or lease it for reforestation.

“How long can you sit there and just watch your life’s work dwindle away little by little?” he asked. “The EPA veto is a condemnation of my land, and it’s not just my land — it’s the land of people who have been farming here for generations. The EPA veto is going to make the land unprofitable to farm because the risk is just too high without the pumps. Eventually the crop production is going to be lost, and the jobs and communities that go along with it are going to be lost, too.”

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Contact Steve Sanoski at ssanoski@vicksburgpost.com