Mississippi River Commission Testimony: Jerry Riddle in Natchez August 2016

Testimony of Jerry Riddle

For this entire past year, not one day have I been able to drive home on the road, because it’s been under water, because you refuse to open the Morganza Spillway.  Why?  Why would you do it?

Is it because you have the big crawfish pond built on the other side of the spillway now?  Is it because they are putting new homes over there now?  What’s going on?  It’s cost me a lot of extra money, because I can’t get home.  Now don’t get me wrong, I can run a mower through the swamps, but I’m just not able to right now. 

What’s going on with you people?  Why don’t you ask somebody that knows?  How come we can’t open the Spillway?  How come you don’t fix our roads, they are torn up?  It costs hundreds of thousands even millions of dollars to fix our roads from Ft. Adams to Jackson Point.

It’s y’alls fault.  They have currents on Lake Mary Road; they have holes 30 feet deep on the Lake Mary Road.

Somebody needs to get together and take this in hand, you’re going to have others speakers besides me on this.

I want to go home.  I’m 77 years old, by God, I want to go home and they won’t let me.

(transcribed from audio recording)