By Chris Talbott
Associated Press
Wednesday, September 3, 2008

JACKSON, Miss., Sept. 2 -- The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday all but killed a federal plan nearly seven decades in the making to build the world's largest water pump in the Mississippi Delta.

Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water, followed through on the agency's threat to veto the $220 million U.S. Army Corps of Engineers flood-control project over the objections of local, state and federal officials.

The EPA feared that the project could destroy thousands of acres of wetlands, impair water quality, and harm the habitat of threatened and endangered species, all violations of the federal Clean Water Act.

The proposal would have moved 6 million gallons of water a minute from 67,000 acres of wetlands along the Yazoo River, mostly for the benefit of flood-prone farms.

Congress authorized the project in 1941 but never fully funded it before the Clean Water Act became law in 1972.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and conservationists have long opposed the project, which got the EPA's attention in 1977 after the agency was given administrative powers under the Clean Water Act.

It is the 12th time a veto has been issued under the act by the EPA since 1990. The power has been used to stop a shopping mall and a dam in other states.

The Yazoo project is 10 times as large as the 11 other vetoed projects combined.

Sens. Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker, both Mississippi Republicans, argued in a letter to Grumbles that the agency had no right to overrule Congress.