Holland Signs Record Of Decision For Mississippi River Mainline Levee Work

The Corps of Engineers announced March 12 that  the Record of Decision for the Mississippi River Mainline Levees Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement II has been signed by Maj. Gen. Diana Holland, commanding general of the Mississippi Valley Engineer Division.

The Record of Decision details the Corps’ decisions on conducting remedial measures necessary to control seepage and/or raise and stabilize deficient sections of the existing levees and floodwalls to protect the structural integrity and stability of the Mississippi River levee system, as well as measures to avoid and minimize adverse impacts and compensate for unavoidable losses to significant environmental resources.

Through evaluation of information obtained from levee inspections, seepage analyses, research, studies and engineering assessments, the Memphis, Vicksburg and New Orleans districts together identified a total of 143 additional work items along various reaches of the Mississippi River mainline levees feature of the Mississippi Rivers and Tributaries (MR&T) project.

These 143 work items constitute the proposed action for the Final SEIS II and are located across portions of seven states: Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

The Final SEIS II supplements and augments the 1976 FEIS and 1998 Supplemental EIS (SEIS I) to achieve the Corps’ primary goals for the MR&T: 

(1) providing flood risk management from the project design flood; and (2) being an environmentally sustainable project.