WJTV-TV Jackson
As Delta floodwater recedes new stress and challenges rise for locals
VIDEO
As water continues to recede in the Delta some homeowners are assessing the damage and cleaning up.
For a handful the recovery process is here but it’s nowhere near over or any easier for Wetland locals who now face a real uphill battle piecing back together their properties while spending a fortune.
Here we are on the door step of August and those in the Delta are still fighting.
“I’m not going to let this flood beat me,” Paulette Gordon of Holly Bluff said.
For some yards and homes like Paulette Gordon’s in Holly Bluff the water has mostly receded but the burden of cleaning up is just as stressful.
“You know pulling on the sandbags, all of them have got to be removed, getting the mud and the gunk out of the storage buildings,” Gordon explained. “It’s a physical stress and still a mental stress.”
One of her most prized yard projects destroyed was this walk way made out of old bricks she collected from old stores and homes in Holly Bluff over the years. Each dated and named where they came from, but those have now washed away reminding her what many floods have done to her town over the years.
“This was kind of like a memory walk that you could read,” Gordon said. “They may be under the mud I’m not sure, but they’re gone. And a lot of the bricks no longer have the words on them.”
All this yard labor trying to get her property back to green grass and plants has taken a toll on Mrs. Gordon’s health to.
“I had an infection on my finger that I had to go to the doctor for, I had an infection in my eye I had to go to the doctor for,” Gordon said. “Just from being in the mud and the water and the stink and from the dead animals.”
Wednesday afternoon many Delta cries made it to Washington as Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker advocated for the completion of the Yazoo Backwater Pump Project.
“More than 600 households have suffered severe damage, more than 400 families have been displaced since February,” Senator Hyde-Smith stated. “And agriculture losses will likely exceed $800 Million.”
“It also included a series of pumps, and were the only state that after all this time doesn’t have our pumps,” Senator Wicker said.
Some losses go beyond finances like family Christmas ornaments Mrs. Gordon made and bought with her grand kids, but are now ruined or destroyed.