Lawrence County and Monticello leaders are taking the next stepin studying the feasibility of a decades-old plan to divert thePearl River and create unique development opportunities for thecity.

Williford, Gearhart and Knight, Inc., Engineers and SurveyorsProfessional Engineer Jeff Knight will gather information toproduce a cost analysis as an engineering consultant on thepotential project to divert the Pearl River down a manmade,half-mile channel around the northeast corner of Monticello.

Lawrence County Community Development Foundation Director BobSmira said if Knight’s study proves feasible, county and cityleaders would seek financial assistance from the MississippiDevelopment Authority for the continuation of the plan.

“He will guesstimate what he thinks we’re going to need to doengineering-wise,” Smira said. “If he gives us some idea of whatwe’ll be needing to do, we will go and try to find that money.Then, we’ll try to find the right engineers to do it.”

Smira said WGK’s work in Natchez on a similar but smallerproject to dam St. Catherine Creek was what led county and cityleaders to Knight. Smira said the delegation that visited withMississippi’s congressional leadership in Washington D.C. last weekalso happened to bump into David Gardner, the Natchez cityengineer, who discussed WGK’s work with Lawrence Countyofficials.

“When you go to things like this, you see others who have donesimilar projects and you get more ideas,” Smira said. “It’s notnecessarily who you see on the congressional staff, but who elseyou see who can help you out some.”

For the creek project in Natchez, Knight and WGK created anelectronic hydraulic river model that predicts how a diverted bodyof water would behave. If Knight’s consulting work leads county andcity leaders to go forward with the Pearl River project, such amodel would be the next step.

“We can simulate high and low river conditions, possible floodevents and project how the river would respond to this change,”Knight said.

Knight said information from bank-to-bank cross section surveysand data collected from agencies such as the Corp of Engineers,U.S. Geological Survey and the Mississippi Department ofEnvironmental Quality would be compiled during a 90-day project tocalibrate such a river model.

“Once the model is running, we can say, ‘We had this many inchesof rain in this part of the basin and it did this to the river,'”Knight explained. “Then we can change the river characteristics toshow the new channel, superimpose the new information and generateanticipated results.”

Knight said the highly adaptable hydraulic model will allowcounty and city leaders to study the potential impact diverting theriver would have on the local ecosystem and those downstream.

“You need that step, because what they’re proposing may verywell be a fantastic idea with no negative impacts,” he said. “Thenagain, you have to be careful because it could have seriousramifications on flooding.”

Monticello Mayor Dave Nichols has said the project would not goforward if it were determined that residents living downstream fromthe city would experience increased flooding from the river’sdiversion.

Knight believes the project can work, however. The company’shydraulic model for the damming of St. Catherine Creek in Natchezshowed the project would succeed, and the city received federalassistance in carrying out the plan.

“We have proven with the hydraulic model that this is a goodidea and it will work, and we can do it without altering the100-year flood plain,” Knight said. “The Pearl River is asubstantially larger body of water, but I don’t think we see anyreal problems.”

The diversion of the Pearl River would result in the formationof an oxbow lake and island that could be used for waterfrontdevelopment and the creation of recreational and tourism industriesin Monticello. The plan, created in 1985 by the Corp of Engineers,has recently been given new life by the interested of localresidents and landowners along the river.