Overview:
The Arkansas city becomes one of the few majority-Black cities to get an upgrade that will prevent flooding by restoring wetlands
The most obvious divide between Memphis, Tenneseee, and West Memphis, Arkansas is the river that runs between the two cities: the Mississippi.
But there’s another important difference between the east bank of the river and the west that doesn’t have to do with municipalities or state borders. The Memphis side sits on high ground, earning the city the nickname Bluff City, while West Memphis is a mere 11 feet above river level. This makes one side vastly more vulnerable to flooding than the other.
But with a new $16 million federal grant from the Department of Transportation obtained last week, West Memphis is going to lean on its lowland roots. The money will help the city restore hundreds of acres of wetlands along its riverfront as a means of flood control.
The grant is one of many included in an $830 million climate-resiliency package from DOT, which was funded through President Biden’s infrastructure bill. But it stands out for two reasons: it’s one of just a few projects that won’t replace a bridge, rebuild a road or upgrade a more traditional infrastructure project, and it’s taking place in a majority Black city.
“In this particular case, it’s actually investing in what’s called natural infrastructure,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told Fox 13 Memphis. “It turns out that by shoring up those wetlands, we can improve their ability to handle and absorb water so that it never creates a problem for I-55, or I-40.”
For well over a century, the levee-centric approach to flood control has ruled life in the lower Mississippi. Build the levee high, drain the wetlands on the other side to farm or develop, and hope you built high enough when the river crests.
West Memphis is protected by such a levee system — its development and growth in the early 1900s would’ve been impossible without it — levees can fail catastrophically, of course, West Memphis is far more flood-prone than the Tennessee side of the river.
And the loss of wetlands, oxbows, and other natural areas in floodplains cut down on places where floodwater can safely pool and even soak into the ground (flooding also nourishes the soil, too). With levees and floodwalls and other “hard” infrastructure, excess water is channeled further downstream, making the next high water mark even higher.
The wetland restoration project is targeted at protecting freeways and railways, which are critical to West Memphis’s transportation-hub economy, rather than homes on the floodplain. But because the means of doing so is creating natural areas that will attract hosts of birds and other wildlife, they will provide the city with far more benefits than a concrete flood wall or earthen berm.
Mayor Marco McClendon told Fox 13 he hopes the wetlands restoration will draw new attention to West Memphis’s green and recreational spaces. “We have over 7 miles of paved bike trails where you have bikers, joggers, exercise enthusiasts,” he said.
Life in West Memphis, like much of the lower Mississippi, relies on the heavy hand that humans have had in engineering the river. As climate change makes flooding worse, its Black communities like West Memphis that will be disproportionately at risk of those increasingly dramatic floods.
But with its wetland project, West Memphis is helping to show what a better future could look like along the river too.