Chancellor & Son Inc. has been chosen by farmers in rural East Carroll Parish to rebuild part of an old levee that blew out during the Mississippi River Flood of 2011.

The firm, based in Cordova, Tenn., was picked this week by about six farmers who worked about 10,000 acres of prime farmland, said Mark Brown, who owns about 300 acres closest to the breach left from surging backwater from an oxbow of the river north of Lake Providence. Mud was thrown about a mile inland from the hole and a quarter-mile slew is receding slowly.

Funding is the next step, a difficult one because the grassed-over levee was dropped from federal maintenance in the 1930s after the new mainline protection system was built in Louisiana.

Farmers and officials with the Fifth Louisiana Levee District are pushing for a bond issue from the state.

Brown said the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness is a leading choice to sponsor the bond. The parish police jury was turned down by FEMA to be the conduit for the funds, he said.

The levee district has said it will cost between $5 million and $10 million to rebuild the levee and raise it at least 4 feet.