Proceedings of the 2019 Mississippi Water Resources Conference

Year: 2019 Authors: Johnson B.S., Johnson D.

The Flood Control Act of 1944 provided authority to the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to implement actions to enhance flood control in the Upper Mississippi Delta through the use of channel improvements along the major tributaries within the Big Sunflower Watershed Basin. During the same timeframe significant areas of forestland were cleared to make way for the growing demand of agricultural production. Local drainage districts were formed to improve drainage. These drainage districts often dug numerous ditches, many of which were often hydraulically oversized. As a result, these oversized ditches provided for conditions conducive to significant headcutting in the channels and on the adjacent land. These combined actions significantly increased the runoff and flow rates in the available channel system which in turn caused excessive erosion of the land adjacent to the primary channels. In an effort to counter these aggressive erosional features taking place throughout the basin, USACE was charged with developing a number of best management practices (BMPs) to address the resulting erosion. One of these BMPs is the construction of drop pipe inlet structures. USACE has completed approximately 100 of these BMPs in the Big Sunflower Basin and plans to complete many more to counter the persistent problem.