The Army Corps of Engineers now projects a water pumping station in the Mississippi Delta — fought over for nearly 100 years — will cost a staggering $2.3 billion, but critics say the federal government has failed to show the benefits justify the costs.
The Trump administration plans to spend over $58 million this year on planning, designing, engineering and mitigating for the environmental impacts of the Yazoo Pumps project. First conceived in the 1940s, the project would consist of a powerful hydraulic pumping system to drain and divert water away from Mississippi’s rural, flood-prone Yazoo Backwater Area.
EPA vetoed the project in 2008 over its potential to destroy up to 68,000 acres of wetlands. The first Trump administration revived the project, and the Biden administration approved a new version in January 2025.
The Army Corps now expects the pumps to cost more than 10 times the amount estimated in 2007, the last time a cost-benefit analysis was done. While the agency said last spring that it would release a new economic justification for the project, the analysis is still unfinished.
