MAYERSVILLE — Voices supporting and opposing the Yazoo Backwater Area pumping station remained as heated as ever Thursday, as about 150 residents, engineers and elected officials jammed Issaquena County Courthouse for the first public hearing in seven years on the project anticipated since 1941.

Environmental and wildlife preservation continued to oppose a facility to pump trapped water out of the South Delta in the face of another revision by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Vicksburg District that lessens the scale and impact area along with increasing habitat and other mitigation efforts.

Most local and regional officials support the effort to keep more acreage in production during flood years on the Mississippi River. “It’s a balanced project and it’s great for the environment,” said Peter Nimrod, chief engineer for the Board of Mississippi Levee Commissioners.

County boards of supervisors in 10 Delta counties — including Warren — have passed resolutions supporting it, framing the issue with the region’s last major flood in 1973 in mind.

“If we don’t control flooding, we will be out of business and out of existence,” said Issaquena County Board President Willie Bunton.

“There will be another flood in the Mississippi Delta, just like there will be another hurricane in New Orleans,” said Washington County District 3 Supervisor Al Rankins, adding opponents of the pumps are “environmental extremists.”

The Mississippi Delta, which stretches from Vicksburg to Memphis, is an alluvial plain drained by creeks and streams that make their way south to the Yazoo River or other lakes inside the mainline Mississippi River Levees. Steele Bayou, which enters the Yazoo along Mississippi 465, has a gated structure that normally allows a natural flow. The pumps would move trapped rain and seepage water from the Delta only when the gates were closed to prevent even more flooding by water backing up the Yazoo during mainstream floods.

The Corps unveiled what it dubbed its “final” pump plan Nov. 13, and, according to normal procedures, set the hearing for public comment. The project could start as early as next year, but in realistic terms faces congressional action and funding plus litigation expected from some of those represented at the hearing.

“It’s a waste of time, money and effort,” said Paula Vassey of Jackson County, who scolded engineers and Delta residents.

The pumps would be the final element in a larger series of flood control measures authorized by Congress in 1941 and other phases completed through the years. The price would be $220 million, down substantially from previous estimates, and though full funding is years away if it clears environmental hurdles, about $60 million in funding was set aside last summer for it and other Mississippi projects.

It is also subject to veto by the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

The new operational plan says that if flood levels reach 87 feet above sea level inside the Steele Bayou structure, the pumps would move 14,000 cubic feet of water per second from the land or Delta side to the river side. That would keep about 630,000 acres in production, 55,000 acres in timber and the rest in crops.

Part of the conservation efforts entail buying permanent easements from willing sellers of land, whereby the land must be used for wildlife and forestry purposes. Senior project manager Kent Parrish expressed confidence the Corps could buy the 10,622 acres needed to satisfy habitat ratios.

Values of timber harvested in the region would be stimulated by about $100 per log if floods were mitigated, said Greg Bardwick of Delta Wildlife & Forestry Inc., adding the reproductive cycle of such animals found in the Delta as turkey and deer are affected by floods.

Another compromise with the federal Environmental Protection Agency touted by Corps project managers is in wetland protection, a major point of contention among those opposing the pumps.

Much of the last seven years has gone to in-the-field coordination with the EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Natural Resource Conservation Service to evaluate its effect on wetlands, according to the Corps.

“We’ve adopted the EPA’s analysis of wetlands,” senior project manager Kent Parrish said, adding later he was confident the Corps could buy out 10,622 acres needed to avoid calculable losses in wetland habitat.

Federal definitions stipulate an area must be saturated for 14 consecutive days of the March-to-November growing season to be a wetland.

Still, groups voicing opposition focused on damage to natural habitat and other alternatives such as ring levees not taken into effect by the Corps’ latest findings.

“We believe a large amount of wetlands will be negatively affected,” said Cathy Shropshire, executive director of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation, adding continued droughts in the growing season will be “just as big a problem as flooding.”

Effects mentioned by those opposing the project — a distinct minority among those gathered Thursday — included an inability of a drier Delta to contribute to a healthy river ecosystem.

“We need functional wetlands to filter pollutants,” said Bruce Reid of Audubon Mississippi, adding the Corps planned the project “in a vacuum.”

Other critics of the pumps mentioned the worthiness of the project in the face of attempts to secure federal funding to restore coastal wetlands and address incidences of oxygen-depleted “dead zones” in the Gulf of Mexico off coastal Louisiana.

“Wetlands are essential filters that serve as sponges to hold floodwater,” said Stephanie Powell of New Orleans-based Gulf Restoration Network.

As the three-hour hearing wore on, responses became sharper.

“Some talk about destruction of the wetlands. Have you seen destruction to crop land?” asked retired Corps engineer and Eagle Lake resident John Knight.

Some questioned the timing of the hearing relative to the comment period’s Jan. 22 deadline, as well as demographic and flood insurance claim statistics cited in the Corps’ final report said to show a region less prone to flooding than engineering calculations show.

“The backwater levees have taken care of the problem,” said Louis Miller, director of the Mississippi Sierra Club.

South Delta native T. Logan Russell disputed arguments on both sides, invoking references both religious and biological.

“Before we had the Corps, we still had trees and we still had wildlife,” Russell said.

Once comments are submitted by mail and online, a draft record of the public feedback will be sent to the president of the Mississippi River Commission, Brig. Gen. Robert Crear. From there, Parrish said, no specific deadline exists for its approval by the MRC.