Voices of the Floods

The latest episode of Voices of the Floods, a podcast by The Vicksburg Post, features analysis and commentary by host Anna Guizerix, more than one year after the Yazoo Pumps Project was vetoed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The Post contacted individuals and federal agencies involved with the project, many of which responded to requests for comment. The episode delves into these statements, the status of the project and what feedback elected officials have for the EPA and the Biden Administration as it pertains to flooding in the South Mississippi Delta.

The latest episode of Voices of the Floods, a podcast by The Vicksburg Post, features Thomas Jones, who lives in the Holly Bluff community in the South Mississippi Delta.

Jones's father sold more than half of the family farm to the United States government in the 1950s, on the promise that digging a canal through it would help mitigate flooding in the South Delta as part of what is now known as the Yazoo Backwater Pumps Project.

Now, almost 70 years later, the family is still waiting for the sale of that land to mean something. Jones has lived through three floods himself, and his late father, born in 1901, lived through the 1927 flood.

The latest episode of Voices of the Floods, a podcast by The Vicksburg Post, features Janet Stuart Whitfield, who lives at Lockwood Plantation in the Fitler Community.

Whitfield has been shaped by the four generations who forged through life in the delta dirt before her.

Settling in the South Mississippi Delta in the 1840s, the Smith family was one of the first five families to homestead in the area. Eventually, members of the Heath family bought land on Lockwood Plantation. Whitfield, a descendant of the Smith and Heath families, grew up at Lockwood and lives on the property today.

Fourth-generation Issaquena County resident Harlie Beth Windham was 15 and 16 years old when the Yazoo Backwater Flood devastated her community.

While other children were preparing to get out of school for the summer, applying for jobs or completing college applications, Windham worked alongside her father (recently elected Sheriff Waye Windham) and spent hours filling and delivering sandbags to her neighbors in need. It's an experience Windham said she'll never forget and one that forced her to mature faster than she'd thought.

Those who've driven U.S. 61 through the northern end of Warren County and into the South Mississippi Delta over the last four years have likely seen signage that reads, "FINISH THE PUMPS."

In some spots, it's spray-painted on old propane tanks. In one place, it's spelled out in 8-foot-tall letters on the side of a grain silo. And one would have to be blind to miss the giant bull statue near Onward that reads, "NO MORE BULL. FINISH THE PUMPS" in all-capital letters.

But fewer people know the face behind the blog that originated the slogan: Eagle Lake resident Ann Dahl.

Although he's not from the South Delta, Mississippi Levee Board member and Greenville native Hank Burdine spent every day of the 2019 Yazoo Backwater Flood riding along the main line levee in his truck or riding through floodwaters in his boat. During that six-month period, Burdine said he witnessed events that have haunted him since.

When Fitler native Percy Chocolate is asked how many floods he's lived through in the South Mississippi Delta, his answer is, "All of them."

Born in 1931 and now a healthy 91 years old, he's not far off from the truth. His daughter, DeBorah Williams, also participated in this episode and shared her own perspective of the way floods — and flood responses — impact South Delta residents.

Faces of the Floods is a series by The Vicksburg Post that tells the stories of people impacted by catastrophic floods in the Yazoo Backwater area.

Cary resident Alfred Thomas Sr. has waded in the floodwaters of the South Mississippi Delta his whole life, just as his father did before him and his grandfather before that.