Two days before Thanksgiving, Fitler resident Anderson Jones and his family moved back home after having been displaced for five years following the 2019 backwater flood.

“I did all I could try to keep this water from getting in here, but I couldn’t stop it,” Jones said. “I stayed until the water started coming through the hall.”

In 2019, about 500,000 acres of land and 686 homes were flooded in the Yazoo Backwater area.

Jones, his wife, and his two children lived in an apartment in Vicksburg for five years while the house was being repaired. He said he is very glad to finally move back in. Jones, who has mobility issues and diabetes, said the staircase at the apartment complex was a daily obstacle for him.

Jones has been publicly vocal about the challenges of dealing with a flooded home, having given multiple testimonials to government officials at public meetings on flooding issues in the area.

“Everybody said, ‘You ought to just get up, you ought to just move, you ought to just leave. Why you want to stay out there?’ I said, ‘This is my home and that’s where my heart is,’” Jones said. “I said, ‘There’s no place like home.’ I don’t want to stay nowhere else.”

Jones said he remembers the home flooding in 1973 when he was still a child; however, the water only stayed for three months, compared to the six months the home was flooded in 2019.

A lot of work had to go into the house before it was habitable again. Mold was major issue for Jones to contend with. The house had to be stripped to the studs.

“That mold had run from the bottom to the top of it. All up there, you know, just black mold. I had to rip and tear it all the way down,” he said. “They wanted to tear my house down, but no, this is a family house. My daddy built it and I was born and raised in this house. I didn’t want nobody to tear it down or nothing. So (we) rebuilt the whole thing back over. Everything is new.”

Jones said insurance helped, but he had to fund some of the work himself.

As for the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Yazoo Backwater project’s current progress toward finally finding a solution to the flooding issues, Jones said he is optimistic.

“I feel great and I feel relief,” he said, adding that he worries when it starts to rain heavily. “But once you know they’re in the process of doing this here, you don’t be as worried. I can sleep. I can sleep peaceful.”

The project to find a solution to the flooding has been in development for decades but has recently gained traction. The goal of the project is to reduce flooding in the Yazoo Backwater area. In November, USACE published the final Environmental Impact Statement for the project.

Read more about Anderson Jones’ story here.