Environment

BPF promotes environmental regulatory reform and actively engages the bureaucracy regulating flooding on the Mississippi River. BPF believes mitigating the flooding by using Old River Control Complex would give Mississippians back their privately owned land.

Featured Work

Blissful Ignorance vs Mistakes of Omission

by Kelley Williams Published May 22, 2026 “The biggest mistakes are mistakes of omission, not commission. It’s the things you knew enough to do — they were within your circle of competence — and you were sucking your thumb. Those are the ones that hurt.” — Warren Buffett, University of Georgia, 2001

Bigger Pie Forum Projects

Mississippi River Flooding

Consumer Advocate

Inquiries

Clogged Arteries and Clogged Rivers

Clogged Arteries and Rivers

Clogged arteries cause heart attacks.  Clogged rivers cause floods. If plaque clogs your widowmaker artery and you don’t get a stent, you may have a serious heart attack.  The Mississippi River is the country’s main transportation artery.  It’s vital to our economy and national security.  It is clogged with plaque.  It needs a stent.

Read More...
Who You Gonna' Believe?

Who You Gonna’ Believe?

“Who you gonna’ believe? Me or your lying eyes.” Substitute Entergy’s spokesperson for Chico Marx, and you have the current gaslighting telling you don’t believe what you see happening in other states and what common sense tells you will happen here. Just trust Entergy not to raise electric rates for small customers to benefit Amazon’s data centers.

Read More...
Why Won’t the Corps Remove the Mississippi’s Bottleneck?

Why Won’t the Corps Remove the Mississippi’s Bottleneck?

The US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) is in charge of flood control on the lower Mississippi River (1928 Flood Control Act). Congress gave it that job to prevent another disastrous 1927 flood. The Corps has spent billions on its Mississippi Rivers and Tributaries Project (MRTP). It is supposed to keep the largest future flood (Project Flood) inside the levees and pass it safely to the Gulf. But the Corps’ 2019 flow line study predicts levees will overtop again — in a lesser flood.

Read More...
Cliff Notes for Corps Speak

Cliff Notes for Corps Speak

Cliff Notes began as short plot summaries of classic novels and stories. Now they are cribs about complex topics and spin. Corps Speak is the US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) clever spin that evades responsibility for higher and longer Mississippi River floods (a complex topic). This story began when Congress put the Corps in charge of flood control (1928 Flood Control Act) to prevent another 1927 flood disaster.

Read More...
Hans Albert Einstein Was Wrong

Einstein Was Wrong

Not Albert, his son Hans. As far as we know, Albert was right about his General Theory of Relativity and other natural laws. Hans was not as famous as his father. But he was the world expert on river sediments. He advised the Corps of Engineers (Corps) on the design of the Old River Control Complex (ORCC) in the 1950s.

Read More...
Yazoo Delta Backwater Flooding

Yazoo Delta Backwater Flooding

Backwater flooding happens when the Mississippi River is higher (about 43’ at Vicksburg) than the Yazoo River and blocks its discharge. It takes less rain to raise and keep the Mississippi above 43’ than it used to. (See More Flood for Less Rain.) So backwater flooding and batture flooding inside the levees are more frequent and longer — over three times longer since 2015. Why? What happened to cause a step change in flooding in 2015?

Read More...