Officials hope a measure inserted into the Senate appropriations bill by Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., will revive a $220 million project to help the Yazoo River backwater areas during floods.

Peter Nimrod, chief engineer for the Mississippi Levee Board in Greenville, told the Warren County Board of Supervisors Monday the item inserted by Cochran is aimed at restarting the Yazoo River Backwater Project, which was initially included as part of the Mississippi River and Tributaries project to control flooding from the Mississippi River.

The project has been dormant for 10 years.

Nimrod asked the supervisors for a letter of thanks to Cochran, who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, for inserting the wording into the appropriations bill.

“It’s not into law yet, but it’s got a shot,” he said. “Once that language is put in there, it’s a shot it could be passed.”

He said the supervisors of Washington, Issaquena, Sharkey and Yazoo counties have already sent letters.

The backwater project is designed to remove water from Steel Bayou during floods and pump it into the Yazoo River by installing a pump capable of pumping 14,000 cubic feet of water per second. The pump would be located next to the Steel Bayou structure.

When the Steel Bayou control structure is closed, Nimrod said, the water trapped behind it has nowhere to go. “That’s where the pump will pump the water over the levee and evacuate some of the flooding that’s occurring in the south delta. It pumps it over the levee into the Yazoo River, which flows into the Mississippi River at Vicksburg.”

Nimrod said the project was authorized in 1941 as part of the MR&T when plans for a floodway to remove water near Greenville and send it through Arkansas and Louisiana fell through.

“They (Corps officials) knew the water would increase in the Mississippi South Delta,” he said.

Work on the pump design and the environmental impact statement for it began in in 1978, and was completed in 1982. Work began on the project began in 1986, but the 1986 Water Resources Development Act called for cost-sharing, which required local governments to share in the cost of the project, and it went dormant for 10 years.

The project was revised in 1996 without cost sharing, and work resumed on a new environmental impact statement that was released in 2007. The Environmental Protection Agency vetoed the project in 2008.