Warren County has added its support to a letter asking Congress to reserve $50 million to complete the Yazoo Backwater Project until a lawsuit challenging a veto of pumps at Steele Bayou is resolved.

County leaders in Warren, Issaquena, Sharkey, Yazoo, Humphries and Washington counties received requests this month from the Mississippi Levee Board to sign a letter addressed to U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson and Sens. Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker.

In 2009, the Levee Board filed suit against the Environmental Protection Agency, claiming the agency illegally axed an Army Corps of Engineers design to remove impounded water from Lower Delta forests and fields in flood years. The project has evolved since Congress first authorized it in 1941.

EPA cited provisions of the Clean Water Act and potential harm to habitat in its veto. Supporters of the pumps have touted the most recent version of the pumps as balanced and necessary.

In its suit, the levee authorities say the EPA did not have veto authority because Congress had signed off on the project in the early 1980s and an executive agency can’t cancel an act of Congress.