Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith issued the following statement.
U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) today voted for final passage of an appropriations bill that will direct more than $184.1 million for 30 authorized U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projects in Mississippi, including $49 million for the Yazoo Backwater Pumps and $21.9 million for Arkabutla Lake dam repairs.
The Senate passed the FY2026 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, 82-15, as part of a three-bill package (HR.6938) that will now be sent to President Trump for his consideration. Hyde-Smith, who serves on the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, worked with her colleagues to secure increased funding beyond the administration’s budget request for projects in Mississippi.
“The Army Corps always has important projects underway in Mississippi to improve our waterways and ports. I’ve been focused on ensuring it has adequate resources to make headway on securing the Arkabutla Lake dam, moving us forward on the Yazoo Backwater pumps, and sustaining our flood protection infrastructure,” Hyde-Smith said. “This is a responsible bill and I’m pleased it’s on a clear path to be signed into law.”
Hyde-Smith indicated that the FY2026 measure builds on her previous efforts to support Army Corps work in Mississippi. Army Corps witnesses at a June 2025 budget review hearing testified to their full commitment to implementing the Record of Decision for the Yazoo Backwater Area Water Management Project.
The FY2026 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill funds the Army Corps, Bureau of Reclamation, and U.S. Department of Energy defense and nondefense programs, as well as independent agencies like the Delta Regional Authority and Appalachian Regional Commission. Items of interest to Mississippi in this measure include:
Yazoo Backwater Area Project: $49 million to support flood risk management.
Delta Headwaters Project: $5 million
Mississippi Flood Control Reservoirs and Lakes: $30.1 million
- Arkabutla Lake – $21.9 million, a $15.9 million increase over the budget request, for emergency dam repairs and regular operation and maintenance.
- Enid Lake – $5.6 million
- Grenada Lake – $5.7 million
- Sardis Lake – $6.8 million
Mississippi Ports: $21.8 million for dredging, operation and maintenance activities
- Greenville Harbor – $3 million, a $1.67 million increase
- Vicksburg Harbor - $2.4 million, a 1.38 million increase
- Rosedale Harbor – $3.1 million, a 1.65 million increase
- Gulfport Harbor – $6.7 million
- Pascagoula Harbor – $6.5 million
Mississippi Water and Wastewater Infrastructure: $28.8 million to support water/wastewater infrastructure
- DeSoto County - $15 million
- City of Meridian – $10 million
- Rankin County – $3.8 million
Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway: $31 million for operation, maintenance, and wildlife mitigation activities
Independent Agencies:
- Appalachian Regional Commission: $200 million
- Delta Regional Authority: $32 million
The enactment of this three-bill package will mean Congress has approved six of the 12 annual appropriations bills for FY2026. HR.6938 spends less money—$10 billion less—than if these agencies were funded under a continuing resolution. Congress has until Jan. 30 to act on the remaining FY2026 funding bills before a current continuing resolution expires.
Note: President Trump signed the bill into law.


50 comments:
Bribing the taxpayers with their own money.
Is an election coming up this year?
you mean some yankee’s money because Mississippi dont pay for that!
Yeeehaw Minnie Pearl done gone up to DC and brought back the bacon! haaaaw!
Where is the $$ for one lake? I guess flood risk management doesn't apply to the highest concentration of population?
Hell yeah thanks CHS! At least she is spending our tax dollars spent HERE instead of Ukraine, can’t say the same about our other worthless reps. Kudos to her!
Otherwise it would go to Ukraine
Federales finally making good on their own plan. About damn time.
That’s a lucky bunch of 65 people who benefit from this crap
Exactly why I voted for her - fiscal conservatism!!! Oh, and as an added bonus we can finally save those deer camps.
January 27, 2026 at 11:56 AM
You fuckers bitch when industry does come to Mississippi.
The handful who live in Issaquena County will be thrilled.
Thank you CHS because Bennie Thompson doesn't give a shit about those people, and there are some black farm hands than live in that area as well. For all of those bitching and moaning, this project was approved and funded years ago and the federal government squandered those funds. This is a self-made problem created by the Federal Government and the Corp of Engineers. You might need to study up on this before you start talking. They created a stopper in a bathtub with no way to let the water out when it starts running.
Also, this affects, Sharkey, Issaquena, Warren, Yazoo, Humphreys and Parts of Washington Counties.
Sadly, a lot of these funds will be wasted fighting groups like Sierra Club who are hippies in NE Jackson who would rather see wildlife parish and chemicals in the water than let these pumps be built. They are blinded by their own ignorance of the area and the elevations that will actually cause the pumps to be cut on.
First time I've heard her name in over a year. WTH does she do with her time ?
All bullshit aside, the Yazoo pumps are very much needed, both for humans and wildlife. Much of the cost is for mitigation; buying land and flood easements. Once the pumps are installed, the only thing they will drain is land that floods once every few years. The environmental groups will have you to believe the pumps will drain wetlands all over the lower Delta, but that is simply not the case, it’s just a fundraising tactic to make donors fearful. If you ever tour the lower Delta during a high water event, you’ll see animals that are desperate, emaciated, and/or dead. The pumps will prevent that type of carnage. The main reason the pumps are controversial is because that controversy raises a lot of money for environmental groups.
She's more fiscally conservative than Warmonger Wicker.
I thought she'd found her backbone when she went after Trump over the ignorant proposed Argentinian beef deal which would have hurt and been a slap in the face to our American farmer. But no, he's still pulling her puppet strings. She's got a Republican opponent and 3 Democrats.
Being more conservative than Wicker is hardly a standard, she is not conservative by any stretching of the definition of the word.
A hyphenated last name is all I need to know…
flooding in the south delta.
this been going on since the beginning of time and it aint going to end soon.
god made that land to flood.
its a flood zone, and always has been. thats why issaquena county has the lowest population of all the 82 counties.
what part about that dont you understand.?
it would be cheaper to have the feds buy out every inch of land there and turn it into one giant wildlife management area. at t
least the people would have public land to hunt on.
oh i forgot.........public hunting land is a dirty word among the perfume pissing landed gentry in the delta.
that land is like a wild animal. it cant be tamed . leave it be.
At least she supports the SAVE Act! Sen Wicker is a RINO tool about to sell the USA down the river.
A lot of "professional service providers" had steak and lobster lunches today and sent the bill to their Yazoo Pump clients.
I followed the hyperlink to HB 6938. I do not see Cindy signed on as a sponsor or co-sponsor. Is this celebratory press release merely a notification that she showed up for a vote on it?
Lest we forget, until the federal budget is balanced and the $35,000,000,000,000 debt is paid off, we're merely turning our children's future over to the Chinese.
BTW, the earlier poster was right. 2026 is the reelection year for this back bencher. That's about the only time we hear anything out of her.
It must be great to be 5:01. Every issue is simple, cut and dried, black and white, no gray areas, and he’s always right. Except in this case, where he has no idea what he talking about. If we took his advice, we would blow the levees and let Mother Nature reclaim the entire Mississippi Delta, one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the U.S., since “God made that land to flood”. While we are at it, let’s take out the Ross Barnett Dam and the flood control works around Jackson. Limit your comments to issues you know; the Yazoo Backwater Area is not one of them.
5:01 that’s a lot of money at $5000-7000/ac. Also, the flooding the pump project fixes is a man made project and MS is the only state along the river that has it without a pumping solution, which has been approved and funded once before in history. Again, it’s best to know what you’re talking about before speaking.
@2:11 - Bennie Thompson also voted to pass this bill. Don’t let the facts get in the way of your whining though, continue on with your nonsense.
She’s more of conservative of her working effort than her fiscal policy.
7:38 here; before anyone points it out, I realize Ross Barnett is a water supply and recreation reservoir, not a flood control reservoir like the four USACE has, but it does have limited flood control functionality, just not much due to its shallow depth.
The highest concentration of population you speak of probably contributes less to society than the 65 someone else spoke of, that will benefit from this pump deal.
Sad but true.
to 7;38............................5;01 is right. that area has been flooding since mississippi entered the union in 1817 .
110 years of trying to control it and they continue to fail.
go read a little history tough guy.
to 2;34......so you worried about the ''animals'' during flooding.
got news for you.
floods are natural.........unlike that big deer corn feeder you got positioned right in front of your deer stand.
There’s very few true conservatives. 99% are just whatever flavor of Republican is currently the fad. MAGA has no true beliefs, only ideas of a belief. It’s fluid.
@5:26 - You think it’s a good idea to stop married women from voting? Explain yourself.
Agreed, is there some way to see what big environmental special interests bribed - ahem, contributed - to her campaign purse to get this through?
10:18, it is laughable that you would lecture someone on history when you are so ignorant of it yourself. The Corps of Engineers has a complex system of levees, canals, water control structures, etc. that prevents 95% of historical flooding in that area, so they by no means have “failed”. The Yazoo Backwater Pumps are another component of their overall plan that would reduce flooding even further.
10:22, flooding is indeed natural. Historically, when flooding occurs, many animals die, but most could slowly migrate to higher ground to wait it out. However, now that high ground is not wooded, but an open agricultural field where they obviously cannot wait out a flood. Bottom line, many more animals will die in a flood now. Everything’s not as simple as you would like to believe.
I do agree with your point on corn feeders.
7;43 the army corps of engineer are a moron govrnment agency that screwed up everything it ever touched, they have proven that over and over with their ''projects ''. maybe you just too young to know what they tried to do to the cashe river and the buffalo river in arkansans, and their work in the south delta has only made the situation worse.
@ 11:25 are you a woman hating misogynist? FYI - Women are completely capable of providing the proof-of-citizenship requirements for voting.
How dare you insult the intelligence of our country’s female American citizens as if they are incapable of something this simple! SHAME!
With the levvees the floods now happen suddenly and the chicken farmers can't just turn the hens loose to fend for themselves. All the wild hogs would get them!
It's always a good time for fundraising!
8:07, please educate the uninformed masses how the situation in the lower Delta is worse because of what the Corps has done. Hopefully, your next response will use the King’s English.
@9:04 this isn’t 8:07… but years ago my first reaction was, “if you buy land inside of a flood zone, then don’t expect the tax payers to bail you out with pumps when your land inside of that flood zone…floods.”
BUT, didn’t the US government create the “bathtub effect” (do a ChatGPT “lower MS Delta bathtub effect” search) with the levees the US government built? And when heavy rain falls inside that levee system the US government built, is it not the case that the rain water becomes trapped, i.e. cannot flow back into the river because the US government built levees block it from doing so?
So, isn’t it:
a.) the US government never should have built any levees at all in the first place, since these wetlands should have been protected?
Or
b.) the US government built levees created the bathtub effect and the US government is now liable to provide pumps to those land owners getting stuck with the rain water that cannot flow back into the river because the US government built levees block it from doing so?
Bullshit, After the Great Flood of 1927, the Corp of Engineers were heros and pioneers that tamed the Mississippi and led to the prosperity throughout the region. Doubtful there are men or women today of their mettle that have a clue as to what to do, except to throw money at it.
"that land is like a wild animal. it cant be tamed", GOD told us in Genesis 1:28 to subdue the land. I will believe him instead of you.
@8:59 - women who marry often change their name to their husbands. Their name may not match their birth certificate. It’s why Project 2025 wanted this provision, to put up a barrier to women voting. MAGA is going to try to sneak this in right before the midterms to stop women from acquiring the necessary documentation in time to cast a vote against their historically unpopular agenda. It’s a slimy, un-American thing to do, but this just isn’t America anymore. God save us.
Interesting to see how many of you leftist-lettuce-heads see any bill passed into law during the Trump administration through your tainted MAGA prism. The humans who will benefit (fifteen years from now) be damned. I've taken dozens of photos throughout this region of houses flooded, toys floating, planks on cinder blocks leading to screen doors and vans sitting in what were yards, half under water. And rural roads overlapping and flooded with barricades throughout those three to five counties.
Most, if not all of you uneducated, yet opinionated, yappers could not take a map and draw a line around the affected area if your lives depended on it.
Reminders:
*The flooding area covers all or part of six counties. Sharkey, Issaquena, Warren, Yazoo, Humphreys and Parts of Washington Counties.
* Mississippi is the only state along the two-thousand three-hundred and fifty-mile long river that does not have these pumps. 2,350 miles.
Over the past 14 years I have attended quite a few meetings of government officials and residents where the on-again, off-again, flood/pump project was the subject discussed.
In a number of those meetings, Bennie Thompson was on the agenda as a participant. On those occasions when he DID show up, he was usually late and had to leave early, obviously to avoid speaking and shaking hands.
On more than one occasion when he was disinterested, he claimed he had to get to a meeting at either Tougaloo or JSU. Once, and more important than his flooding district, he said he had to leave to meet with part-native-American candidate for the presidency, Elizabeth Warren in Jackson. So don't be up in here claiming Bennie Thomson gives a sh!t about his entire district and it's residents.
9:39, there are two control structures in the levee along the lower Delta, Steele Bayou and Little Sunflower. These are basically gates that are open 95% of the time to allow water inside the levees to flow into the Yazoo River and on to the Mississippi River. When water in the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers rises too high, those structures are closed to prevent water from flowing the wrong way back inside the levees. So anytime those gates (the bathtub stoppers) are closed, the water couldn’t flow out anyway due to the high water in the Yazoo. The pumps will take the water ponding up inside the levee and pump it over the levee into the Yazoo River. Once the water level inside the levees are lowered to a minor flooding level, the pumps stop. They will not drain wetlands, they will only drain floodwaters. During high water events, the amount being pumped will be less than 1% of the flow in the Mississippi River, so will have a negligible effect on it. The Corps has a website that shows the water level on each side of the control structures, and it is nervously monitored during floods by anyone with an interest in the lower Delta; farmers, homeowners, hunting camps, state WMA’s, the 60,000 acre Delta National Forest, etc.
Don, this is 12:04 - great post! We both learned in the classrooms of Ricks, Jones, Bobo, et al. to bring facts to an argument.
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